To the casual observer
by metawohoo
Summary: To the casual observer, Harvey Bullock was just another crooked cop, and they were a dime a dozen in Gotham. Then Jim Gordon came along, and Harvey started to change. (Slash at some point in the future)
1. Lackadaisical

To the casual observer, Harvey Bullock was just another crooked cop, and they were a dime a dozen in Gotham. There was little to say about him, and very little of that was positive. If you thought about it really hard, he had all the elements to be a "bad ass motherfucker", though the three terms were only applied to him in separate sentences and in a vastly uncomplimentary way.

Sarah, as his captain, was privy to all the details of his long and unremarkable career, from his days as Dix's partner to the present day. He did close cases, when they weren't too much of a bother, and his criteria for "bothersome" were growing looser and looser as time went. He was (as previously mentioned), an ass and a motherfucker, which made any collaboration precarious at best and "here's my gun in your face" at worst. He received more warnings in a month than the GCPD received bills. Sarah wrote all of said warnings, delivered them, and watched in abject despair as Bullock glanced at the pieces of paper, stuffed them into his pocket, and immediately started discussing something else. Always.

He was still on the force because, this being Gotham, he was one of the best elements the department had to offer.

Which is why Sarah stood her ground while he ranted and screamed about Jim Gordon. He wanted a different partner. Then again, he always did. His shouting would have impressed her - it sure worked on street thugs and petty criminals - if she hadn't heard it all before. Also, seeing how he could neither shoot her nor knee her in the balls, all of his screaming was just gin-scented wind.

– What do I have to do, change his diapers? You've got to be kidding!

– You will do as I...

– I don't care!

– You're going out there, and you're going to stop moaning, and you are going to work on that case and do as you're told instead of losing my time. I'm not reassigning him, nor you, nor anyone because you feel like throwing a tantrum a five years old would be proud off. The topic is closed. Out!

She watched him leave, and walk to Gordon and, in all likelihood, be as bastardly as he could manage in the hopes to convince him to ask for a transfer. He never had to exert much effort to be unpleasant to begin with, so she wouldn't have wanted to be in James' shoes, but he was a big boy. He could handle Bullock's temper, threats, and his habit of foregoing regular showers.

She had picked him for a reason.

She had taken a long, hard look at his file and known he would be dead in six months. A soldier - a war hero - in Gotham. A good man with steel for a spine, and rocks for a brain. They never fared well in the GCPD - they never fared well in town - and there were enough bones in the River. So she had paired him up with Harvey, because Harvey needed to be lifted up - a notch - and James needed to get his head out of the clouds and his feet on the ground. If they didn't kill each other, she figured, they might very well save each other.

Butch knew Harvey Bullock had been, once upon a time, a good cop. Those, like Peter Pan and Bloody Mary, were popular legends in Gotham. Everyone knew a guy who knew a guy who had known a good cop. Sometimes, if the family was lucky, there was even a burial plot to visit. It happened, every now and then. Some rookie, or some Metropolis PD transfer, took one look at the "program", didn't like it, and tried to rent a videotape instead. As the local industry didn't do rental, except of lads and ladies in various states of undress, expectations had to be adjusted.

People knew Harvey Bullock had been a good cop because, well, he told them. Alcoholism was a long trip, and one had a long way to travel before being able to be dead drunk and silent. There was a point where one ended up wailing about the lost days, and the lost dreams, and how they got their partner in a wheelchair for life. Then one just got real quiet and broody and forgot about personal hygiene.

Butch also knew Harvey was kind of a dumbass, but then again he was a cop. Still, seeing him walk into the meat-packing factory to get Jim Gordon back was a surprise because, seriously, who was that stupid? Not to mention, fuck, some people had actual jobs to do. You had to admit it took balls to come, because few people walked in on an execution with a smile on their face, and Harvey had to be pissing himself underneath that "50's pulp fiction cop" facade. However, there was a fine line between dumb and crazy, and the man had taken a nice long jump over it, even before requesting to talk to Fish.

How did a man make it to detective without being able to question the wisdom of threatening a lady who liked movies of fancily dressed butchers cutting her enemies to pieces? Fish was a few fries short of a happy meal, but you had to be missing a whole burger to go and piss her off without even noticing. Gilzean listened to the cop digging is own grave, rolled his eyes a few times, got the phone back, and received unsurprising instructions, which he promptly applied.

Cops.

He almost felt sorry for the idiot. Well, he almost felt sorry for any bastard who was going to be dismembered and gutted on camera. The dying itself, though, Bullock had it coming with his "hero of the day" act. Still, Butch had to wonder where that came from. Had the kid dug up some long lost pride? It never did anyone any good to spend too much time with idealists. In the best case, you ended up feeling like shit. In the worst, you ended up in deep shit.

Well. Enough time wasted.

– Yo! Frankie! he called. Showtime.

– It took a hella crap of convincing, and a few Hail Marys, but Soldier Boy made some efforts to get into the program. Also we pissed of Fish and I wouldn't send guys to the the theater district for a little while, unless they're not needed alive.

Sarah, who had been set on ignoring any new complaint about Gordon, at least coming from Harvey, stopped sorting her paperwork and lifted her eyes.

Then she found some noncommittal words to voice while she refrained from exploding.

– I like how you lead with good news and close with a train wreck. Explain.

– Nah, long story, I'll write ya a report.

She would have retorted by "that I assume I'll see never", but as much as he whined about reports, Harvey wrote them diligently, with plenty of detail, and especially on rainy days, seeing how it gave him an excuse not to go outside.

– Bullock.

– Well Junior decided to go and confront Fish all on his own because he's such a big boy. I didn't get the specifics, just went to collect him while he still had all of his limbs, and it turns out Fish had flown off the handle, there was some shit to deal with with Gilzean, but the kid did a favor for Falcone and we walked away. Still, we might need to suck up to Fish Mooney for a while. And then some. And keep Jim out of sight. He could be transferred, I hear Central City needs guys.

Sarah gaped.

– What the hell did the two of you do?

– We ? I did nothing. And it will blow over. Somewhat. She tends to be real nice to the people she hates until she can stab them in the back. Can I snatch some fancy necklace from evidence or lost and found?

– Bullock. Please.

– Come on, captain, focus on the whole "he's with the program".

– I'll focus on the important things like not being able to send men to a whole district.

And Harvey Bullock going on a rescue mission for a partner he couldn't care less about. Someone hadn't drunk all of himself away.


	2. Firebrand

To Cat, Harvey wasn't much more than a walking sack of booze. He was well liked downtown, and equally well hated. The girls, especially, got along with him. He was a charmer, never tried to swindle them, and had occasional issues with P.E. that made their job easy as pie. He never touched the kids, either, which was more that could be said about some cops. Still, had his enemies too, what with his habit of converting suspects into culprits through beatings and threats. He also handled his "informants" with various levels of civility, as far as she knew, and a few dudes had to be sterile by now.

Even if he stumbled upon Mackey and heard about the kidnappings (which was likely since the boy was a street away), he wasn't going to be much help, because he wouldn't give a fuck. The Bullocks of the world didn't spare a second glance for street kids, and the only efforts they ever made were to avoid other efforts. Child snatchers? Too bothersome for someone like that.

The new cop, though, that Gordon guy? He looked like he actually cared. He even took a few moments to examine the dead guy, when that cop that got there first barely even looked at the man. Of course, Bullock was trying to talk him out of investigating, because work was hard and hobos were not people. And Gordon argued about that.

Considering it was Gotham, and he was alive, maybe he wasn't a cop after all.

She kept watching as Arbogast came back, and as Gordon tore him a new one, and as Bullock pandered to both sides. Then there was some fighting about who was (or not) a bad cop, and it attracted attention. Cat filled "James Gordon" somewhere in the "interesting" category, and slid away.

Theresa used all her concentration, and then some, to pretend that she couldn't hear Gordon and Bullock fighting again. Whoever decided that the GCPD had to be an open space was an asshole, and deserved the most sordid death Gotham could inflict. They were keeping it quiet - at the moment - but it was bound to explode. It always did. And they seemed to think some magical little bubble somehow kept their voices from the people sitting three meters away. A wood railing wasn't a soundproof wall, but who cared?

She perked up when an email popped into her inbox.

The subject was "And so they're at it again".

She turned to the sender, Mary, at the desk in front of her, and smiled, then looked down at her screen.

"Remind me why we shouldn't tell them they are nuisances. Or shoot them", said the email itself.

Theresa put on her most serious face.

"Because Harvey Bullock", she answered. "And does he think if he gets his face closer, Gordon is going to start to listen to him? Ugh. I hate close talkers."

Mary answered with a picture of three stick figures labelled "Now kiss!", and a comment saying "That's just sexual tension".

"Gosh, please. Like I need to picture Harvey with Jim. Who is, like, way out of his league, by the way."

They both turned to the scene as a third voice interrupted.

– Hey! Watch the shoes, clown!

The two women winced even before the punch to the face/knee to the groin combo that sent the meddler to the floor. Bullock left after that, and while his departure brought back peace and quiet (and choked breaths from that third, whatsisname, detective), Theresa still went back to her mailbox.

"As I was saying, because Harvey."

"Who cares THAT much about SHOES? I wouldn't risk THAT for Pradas. And look at Gordon, I think he forgot he was questioning the kid."

Theresa looked. The detective tended to keep his thoughts to himself, but you could see he was shaking with rage, exasperation, and a major case of what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-this-place.

"Can WE ask for his transfer? Or Bullock's, I'm not picky."

"We can try, but the captain seems to think they work well together, since the Wayne thing. We can try to put them in a Get Along Shirt."

"Does that work? I tried it on my kids and my girl just tried to suffocate David with it."

"Worked wonders on mine. Then again they're twelve and fourteen and I told them I'd put the pics on myspace and facebook. And tag them."

"Guess I'll just have to wait six years then", answered Theresa.

She sighed, and went back to work.

One of the perks of Sarah's office was to be right next to Bullock's desk, as well as - more recently - Gordon's. It gave her great comfort to know that, should she ever give in to her murderous rage and riddle them with bullets, she would get a few good shots in before they could even react.

That was, of course, a fantasy.

After two solid hours in Brady's office, being cut to pieces about leaks to the press, personal incompetence and out of control detectives, then one more hour on the phone with mayor James who was not in a more forgiving mood than the commissioner, there was only one thing she could do: be the responsible adult in this whole mess and go mother the two backstabbing brats.

They, of course, didn't have a care in the world. Harvey was slouching in his chair and playing around with sheets of paper, and Jim was concentrating on his work in a suspiciously quiet way. He did cast shifty glances towards her door when he thought she wasn't watching.

Between Bullock having pulled the "anonymous call" trick before, and Jim being a firebrand, she had two potential culprits. The one who didn't warn the press would do it without a moment's hesitation for another case, anyway.

She grabbed a newspaper and charged.

– Gotham spirals ever downward. Mayor James under attack. Vows swift action. Points finger at police department's sluggish response.

Harvey glanced at the front page of the gazette and reacted with his usual indifference. "Just ink".

– Did you give them this?

He looked suitably dumbfounded and offended to appear sincere, he protested with conviction, then attempted to divert her attention to Gordon with a pointed look in his direction and an unsubtle remark. Then again, this was Harvey Bullock, who was the grandfather of all patented liars.

Jim put on his best boy scout face, and swore that he didn't do it. All that was missing for a perfect effect was the "cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye".

– Another mystery, she commented.

The younger detective jumped on his feet and attempted to salvage the situation by explaining their lead. She let him, and listened to their action plan, and went back to her office without a word. If she said even one word, she might not be able to stop at that.

Bullock, not concerned by the fact that her door was open, and her office two feet away, decided to share his thoughts with his partner.

– That was sneaky good. Almost couldn't tell you were lying.

Sarah almost reached for her gun.

When she had paired them up, she had hoped Harvey would encourage Jim to the form of approved law-breaking that made a cop fit in Gotham, not to blatant misconduct. But no, the bastard had to find this amusing, of all things. In any other circumstances, it would have been a good thing to see him react to Gordon's actions with something else than annoyance or anger. It would have been progress. This meant hell for everyone else.

– Is Bullock beating up that guy with a phone book?

Theresa shrugged at Mary's question, and took a better look at the holding cell were a sweaty man with no apparent neck was being questioned.

– It looks like it. It could be a golden statuette for all I care. As long as they get results... Essen will be on everyone's back for as long as the mayor and the commissioner are. The sooner they find those kids, the better.

– Holy hell, I don't remember when I last saw Bullock be productive. Must have been, what, three years ago? But it looks like they are actually getting somewhere.

– Yes, they have the good cop, bad cop routine down to a tee.

– Bad cop, worse cop is more like it. Gordon is cold.

It worked on the perps, too. You couldn't negotiate or threaten a brick wall, and those who were too dense to start talking could always be convinced by Bullock and the closest heavy object. And Jim would let him, because he was both able to appreciate the usefulness of the other man's methods and to set morally acceptable limits. They could do a good job together, and people were starting to notice. It didn't make Gordon better liked, of course, and most of all, it didn't make the two of them less noisy.


	3. Let it go

You got used to seeing the crisp, business-like silhouette of Jim Gordon trailing behind Harvey Bullock. Tanya, and the other working girls, didn't quite know what to make of him yet. He had the looks one of those "white-knight" types, the "I'm arresting you but it's for your own good, so you can fix your life" kind of guy. They stayed away from him and he stayed away from them so far, and it was probably better that way.

He's made it through the month, which probably meant he'd be staying. Harvey's partners - the poor idiots who had somehow ended up on their captain's shit list - usually didn't last that long. They'd beg for a transfer, leave town, or leave the force altogether. He always celebrated their departures, with rounds of booze and funny stories on the crap he had dragged them through before they ran crying to Essen.

You could trust Bullock, with his overblown charm and cheap flirting and sly dog smile. He wasn't much to look at, and he smelled like an ashtray, but he was nice, and funny. He didn't judge you. He wouldn't go and tell you that you'd made all the wrong choices and that your life was fucked up. He didn't care if you'd been in the street for a year or thirty. He told you he owed you, he remembered. He didn't harass you for protection money, didn't beat you up either. He didn't get on your case for small things like drugs or theft or solicitation. He only went after you if you did something real shitty, like kill another girl.

Even Fish Mooney liked him, and she was the mother of all crazy bitches.

So Tanya liked him, kind of, and so did the others. They could see the slow, not so subtle changes.

– He's acting weird, isn't he? she said after he drove away with Gordon.

Vivian looked dumbfounded. She was the prettiest around, with her pale blond hair and cute young face, but she wasn't the most observant.

– What do you mean?

Natalia, who had refused the bargaining of the cheap bastard who had stopped for her, got closer at those words.

– You didn't see? He's all puffing his feathers and shit, so the new guy will look at him. "Look here, Jim, those are my streets, this is my world, I'm good at this".

– Is he?

– He is, confirmed Tanya. That's not how he is with his partners, normally.

– Well normally he hates them, right? replied Vivian. This one, he whines a lot about, but it's more like how he moans about the Essen lady, and he kinda likes her.

Natalia gave her a pointed look.

– That's acting weird. It's a partner. He doesn't want a partner. I think it's a legal thing or something that he has to have one.

– Maybe he just wants a partner that ain't a fucktard?

– I'd have thought he wouldn't want a hero either.

Nothing quite beat seeing Jim Gordon's face when he realized that weather balloons did not, in fact, travel all the way through the atmosphere to stash dead bodies somewhere in outer space. It wasn't just a "why didn't I think of that?" face. It was a "why didn't I think of that? I'm a fucking moron" face. Even with the low quality of the interrogation footage, you could see his eyes shift to the left as the three rusty cogs he used as a brain started to apprehend the law of gravity.

– Yes, retard, they are going to drop at some point but haven't done so yet. A bit like your balls, Andy said to the screen.

When the cameras had been installed into the walls of the interrogation rooms, due to public outrage over police brutality, two years before, the cops had raged and protested. Now, though, they had forgotten about them, especially since nothing bad had ever came out of the recordings. As the guy paid to edit the fancy parts out of the footage (by a variety of parties who had no idea there was such a variety), Andy could watch every interrogation from three different angles, "with sound and in full technicolor". Usually, it was a boring job. He got the questioning ("keep"), the beatings ("erase"), the bribing ("take notes and erase"), and horny idiots who went there for a quickie ("proceed according to the level of eye bleach required"). Bullock and Gordon were quickly becoming his favorite comedy act.

On his own, Harvey Bullock had been a pain. There was only so much you could do to "clean up" an interrogation when the threats and blows started thirty seconds in. He was a dumb cunt who equated "poor resistance to punches to the gut" with guilt. To him, the first person named in relation to a crime had to be the culprit, and he didn't relent until he got a confession. He was notorious for trusting his gut feelings, and since his guts contained more booze than a brewery, those "feelings" were usually shit. On top of that, he thought he was such a smart badass.

Gordon on his own was a bore. You didn't even have to watch his footage. There was no foul play, no law breaking, and you were lucky if you caught one facial expression every thirty minutes. You almost expected a neckerchief to appear around his neck along with a few badges of rank.

The two of them together, though? Hilarious.

There was a lot less blood involved, thus a lot less tedious work for Andy. Bullock would still try his "I'll beat the truth out of you" act, but unless Gordon was fairly convinced that they were dealing with Hitler or something, any raised fist caused him to drag his partner outside for a hurried, preachy little chat about justice, integrity and human rights.

Also, to Harvey - who was a walking brewery running on misplaced pride - working with James Worthaton Gordon had to sting. He would not admit it, even to himself, but you could see the symptoms. He'd come to work sober. He'd stay in for his whole shift. He'd eat his lunch while working instead of vanishing for up to three hours to get a hot-dog. Once upon a time, a century before, he had been fit, and handsome, and good at his job (or so he liked to believe). Standing next to Gordon, who was all of those and more, was a sore reminder of lost days. Watching his attempts to be a little less of a washed out alcoholic was funny as hell.

What was even more entertaining was the faces Gordon made. You could see he was a man who liked being professional, and as expressive as a prison door. Maybe it was a military thing, maybe it was "his dad used to be real strict" thing, maybe he had paralysis of the smile muscles. Obviously, he thought he was doing great. He didn't say a word of his enraged thoughts, kept his voice level when he talked to the perps, seemed soooo serious. But, near Bullock, he had more facial tics than a Tourette's patient. Be it disbelief, be it sheer exasperation, you got priceless still frames. Harvey was driving him nuts. A few months of that and he'd end up in an asylum.

It would be a good show.

Harvey got therapy in his own way.

He was sane, thank you very much, and psychologists were crooks anyway. Even if, like Natalia, you didn't believe that, this was Gotham. The good psychiatrists were sane enough not to work in that shithole, especially since Arkham closed.

So Harvey got it in bed, as a complementary service to Natalia's other skills, like dozens of men in town. People didn't realize how many men needed to talk more than they needed to fuck. Sometimes, she didn't even have to see their cocks.

Harvey ranted a lot, and bragged a lot, and it was a bit aggravating, but then again it was Harvey and he had brought decent beer, and he always left a few more bills than he was supposed to. Detectives were paid enough, apparently, and he was a bachelor with no friends nor family.

– … And the balloon was rising and rising and that idiot wouldn't let go, Harvey said. That's his problem. He can't let anything go. Not the W... Not our cases, not the fucking street kids he wanna babysit, not nothing. It's not complicated to just let it go, just once.

Natalia didn't comment, because her input was neither required nor necessary. He just needed to blow off some steam.

Of course he'd rage about that. She knew everything about "letting it go". Letting go of a silly rule, and then another, and then of your ethics, and then you looked back and the person you used to be was dead and buried and better left in that shallow grave. Once you had well and truly let go, there was no going back. The justifications you'd found for all the stupid shit you'd done wouldn't stand up to your own scrutiny, anyway.

Trying to get back to yourself could only bring you pain


	4. Wound up

When Sarah opened her office's door, it meant that she was not exceedingly busy, was available for work-related conversation, and would listen to your reports, requests, and recriminations. It meant an endless stream of subordinates trying to make the best use of what little time she could spare for them. It also meant being privy to every single word Bullock said, because even if his desk was on the other side of the door and a few steps away, his voice carried.

He didn't talk all the time, of course. Mostly, he made a few unmotivated comments about the cases at hand, or he taunted Gordon, or they agreed to disagree. You could even note a _hint_ of companionship between the two of them, as the mutual dislike turned to tolerance and even - God forbid - regard. Every now and then, though, the older man attempted to have a conversation. And you could _hear_ him from miles away, because a joking, enthusiastic Harvey was boisterous and demonstrative. Even his gestures were noisy.

"I think I know what your problem is", he was saying.

"Yeah?" Gordon replied in his best "entertain me" tone.

"You have no social skills whatsoever."

If Sarah had been drinking a cup of coffee, she'd have choked on it. Which is what Jim did with his own.

"I what?" He gasped between fits of coughing.

"You don't know how interact with people. At all. At first I thought it was just the ladies, and that you only managed to get laid because you're pretty as a picture. But when you pay closer attention, you just suck at being friendly. Hell, you suck at being tolerable."

There was silence at that, and Sarah jumped on the opportunity to attack her pile of paperwork. The Gothamites never ran out of people to kill. It gave her job security, an endless supply of documents to sign, and suicidal ideation. Gunshot wound, gunshot wound, blunt force trauma, gunshot wound, more gunshot wounds, and one man who was forced to drink mercury. She pushed that file away.

"Nah, I _wasn't_ insulting you, dumbass. What I mean is... Just a question. When's the last time you talked to another cop?"

"Twenty minutes ago, with miss Kringle."

"Scratch that. When. Did you last. Talk to someone here. For something else than to ask them to get you a file and when it would be done?"

Another silence.

Sarah snorted at the proof that Harvey Bullock did, in fact, have a notion of manners, and was probably exerting a good lot of effort to pretend otherwise.

"See, Harvey continued, every day you come in, say hello to _no one ever_, sit here, work, and when you go and attempt to communicate with other people, it's to ask them for stuff. Say, there's Alvarez, you "talk" to him three times a week. How many kids does he have?"

There was mockery in Gordon's voice when he answered, as well as no small amount of irritation.

"I don't know. How many kids does he have?"

"I don't know, why the fuck should I care? Alvarez is an asshole. BUT", he added (and you could hear his raised hand), "_but_ it doesn't matter because I'm not _you_. I have tenure. I don't cause trouble. I don't spend my life trying to get myself into an ocean's worth of shit. I don't walk around like I'm made of such hot stuff that I can't _possibly_ lower myself to speak to my fellow cops."

"What? That's nonsense!"

"Oh yeah? You think we don't see how you look at the place? The disgust, like it's "clean the latrines" day and you're the one holding the toothbrush? Like we're all crooked, and incompetent, and worthless?"

Jim didn't immediately answer, and Sarah walked to the door, so she could intervene if the whole thing blew up. Gordon breathed in, forced his lips into a mean, fake grin, and took his time to compose a decent comeback.

He rose.

"No, you got it wrong", he jokingly said. "That's just how I look at _you_."

And he stalked off. Harvey leaned back on his chair and watched him go.

"Aw, Jimmy boy!", he called. "You don't have to take it like that!"

His partner didn't even stop, so he turned towards Sarah instead. She glared at him.

"What? It's not my fault he has a sensitive soul!"

What can you give, but not hold; earn, but not buy; lose, but not give back to the giver?

Trust. Or, if you thought about it, that _other thing_.

You could see it building between Harvey Bullock and James Worthington Gordon. It was, from Edward's perspective, much like looking at birds. Peafowls, especially. Peacocks would display their beautiful trains, ensure that the light hit their plumage just right in order to better court peahens. They would loudly vocalize, to better impress them. The plain females would be attracted by the most magnificent, most vocal of the males.

Humans were much the same.

Harvey Bullock was not very prone to self-analysis. It was no surprise he didn't notice his own behaviour. But he was - undeniably - spreading his scarce feathers under the sun.

The first thing a casual observer noticed was the smell, or lack thereof. Anyone who worked in Bullock's vicinity had come to expect a distinct scent of alcohol around him. Usually, it was potent, and various explanations had been provided about the man's showering and drinking habits. The most prevalent one was "he hasn't thrown a can of beer out since he moved into that shithole of his". That aroma was mostly gone, as were the signs of constant intoxication. He still drank on he job, and still carried that stainless steel flask that had to contain something very strong, but on the whole did it remarkably less often than before the arrival of his new partner.

The changes were not without effect on James Gordon, though he himself didn't see the correlation. He picked up on the subtle hints of improved sobriety - and reliability - and relaxed in return. The most important quality for any mate (or partner) was dependability.

As far as "feathers" went, Bullock's had also improved his job performance, by spending more time at work than he previously did, and by investing more energy in each case they both worked on (though this didn't occur without extended prompting by Gordon).

One could also note the gradual changes in their posturing. Their level of aggression towards each other was steadily decreasing. Bullock, who was a very tactile person, could stand closer and closer to Gordon before the younger man moved away to reaffirm his personal space.

It was, Edward thought, much easier to draw parallels with documented mating behaviour than to attempt to understand the way the two men talked to each other, or than to pick up on the social clues that one was expected to "get".

One could measure the physical distance between individuals, and the amount of alcohol ingested in public in a day, and the total count of knee to the groin connections.

One could get a much better understanding of people when asking the right questions.

Science was a thing of beauty.

Sarah routinely felt like she was the mother of a problem kid. She had a large family of normal, quiet, well-behaved children, whom she totally neglected because her damaged one needed so much more patience and care. The others grew a bit resentful, and she'd pay later, like those inattentive parents who ended up in nursing homes and maybe got a visit for Christmas, if the weather was clement. And that was her metaphorical family, the work one, not the actual one with people she was actually related to. _That_ family communicated with her through post-its left on the fridge and chain emails.

Still, she had to hold the hand of her problem child, who needed her attention. Who else was going to give him some?

She had left her office at three A.M., only to be stopped on the steps of the GCPD by the owner of the closest bar, who was pushing an half-passed out Harvey towards her.

"I can't let him drive in that state", the man had said. "And I am closing, so just... Handle him, alright?"

She had replied with a "Harvey, for the love of all that's holy, _again_?"

He had waved a hand in the general direction of the bartender, and rolled his eyes.

"I'm not _that_ drunk, the man's just being difficult. Mak'im gimme my keys back and I'll just go home."

Sarah had grabbed the keys, stuffed them in her handbag, and dragged her detective away.

"We're getting you a taxi."

"Now you're being difficult. I just need a nap, just..."

And, because he was much heavier than she was and could not be held in place, she had followed him to his car, watched him open an already unlocked door, and hold out his hand for his keys.

She had looked at the car door.

"What? I wasn't gonna lock the car, there's nothing to steal and thieves break windows outta spite. Now may I have my keys, _please_, captain?"

The night had been wet, but not that cold, and she was too exhausted to argue, and he wasn't going to freeze to death during her short night of sleep.

"You'll get them in five hours, when I get back to work. Just sleep it off."

And she had left him there, ignoring his protests and his pleading. She could hardly babysit him every time he drank too much, she'd never have a free night again. That being said, it happened less and less, lately, and she couldn't understand what had caused the relapse. It was a good day. A hitman had been arrested, the mayor saved, and Bullock had even received his fair share of praise about that.

Then it had hit her. Harvey really didn't _need_ to have to rescue Gordon from a trained killer, _again_. He had a track record with partners and murderers, and Dix's tragedy was still clawing at him. And now he was paired up with an idiot who seemed to be allergic to reinforcements and immune to survival instincts. It was bad enough to get that kind of responsibility when you didn't know first hand what it meant to get there too late. No wonder he had drunk himself into oblivion.

When she returned in the morning, he was at his desk, hungover but mostly pleasant, with his best smiling poker face. Then she had been called to Brady's office for a three hours long chat. It had been a good one, too, because when Mayor James was happy, so was the commissioner.

She walked up the stairs to her office just in time to see Jim stalk to his desk and pick up his key and jacket. He looked dejected. Harvey followed him, and tried to pat his shoulder, but the younger man had started moving away as soon as he had sensed his partner's gesture. It wasn't even a conscious effort. He hadn't turned, nor looked Bullock's way. He didn't even seem to notice how Harvey stepped back, his arm still awkwardly half-raised.

"See you later", Jim said, going down the stairs with a nod for Sarah.

Harvey watched him go, then glanced down at his hand as if surprised to find it there, clenched it, and ran it through his hair. Then he put his poker face back on, near instantly.

"Hey, captain. Did it go well?"

"It did. Do keep saving important political figures. You have the thanks of the commissioner."

She turned back towards the exit. Jim was gone.

"What's wrong with Gordon?"

His shoulders sagged a little, then he shrugged.

"Rookie mistake, you know. He thought we'd made a difference."

"What about?"

"Arkham. The mayor just took a big, steaming dump all over it. Jim is off to Wayne Manor to apologize to the boy, or possibly commit seppuku, or something."

"Think he'll get over it?"

"What choice does he have? But yeah, I think so. It's just that his week has been extra shitty. Or at least that's the feeling I got, what with the piss poor mood. Tried to ask but he's not a sharer."

"And you? How do you feel?"

He fished his flask of vodka out of his pocket, and took a sip.

"Splitting headache", he replied. "Working on it."


	5. Personal

People who looked "everywhere" for something tended to look, well, about everywhere. Around, down, under, and even in their own underwear. Up, though? What was there to see? So, when you ran away, the "away" part wasn't mandatory. As long as you managed to get out of sight, you could just climb the nearest fire escape and observe your pursuers from the safety of the roofs.

Gordon was usually not that dense, but hey, it was lunchtime. Bullock was quite insistent about that. Jim didn't even chase her. That was a mildly insulting relief.

She trailed them as they followed the sound of an alarm. She might as well: no way she was getting a burger now, and maybe she'd find another stand on the way, somewhere she wasn't caught lifting a wallet.

Then she stopped following them because she spotted the crazy junkie who was running away with what looked suspiciously like an ATM machine on his back. Wow. She went after him, because ATMs _were_ the XXL version of wallets, and people that high tended to crash veeeeeery low. Pale and sweaty like that, it wouldn't be long before he passed out, especially if he planned to carry twice his weight in metal all around town.

It took a while, but he finally nested in an old warehouse, where he dropped the ATM on the floor. Then picked it up. And dropped it again. A dozen times.

Whatever it was the dude was on, it was nasty.

Cat, perched on a beam, watched him fall to his knees, and try to bash the machine open with his bare hands. When that failed, he used a metal rod. It took him a moment before he grasped the concept of just trying to get the money drawer out. He was making good progress when he jumped to his feet and ran out.

She waited a few moments then dropped to the floor, and peeked inside the partly broken drawer. You couldn't get to the bills yet, though. She used the rod as a lever to try to enlarge the gap, but had to run and hide after a few minutes, as she heard footsteps. The junkie had returned with what looked like all the dairy in Gotham, and some to spare.

He drank it all, gallon after gallon, and tore the ATM apart, before running off again. The next three hours were a loop of him leaving, Cat getting down of her perch to snatch a few bills, and him returning with more milk. Then Gordon and Bullock arrived for a face-off that ended up... Something.

That dude had it coming, really. "Bohoo, I snorted some random drug some random guy looking like Van Gogh gave me and now I don't feel so good."

There was something to be said about natural selection, namely "does not apply in Gotham". Gothamites seemed to have a few mantras, like "If it's not nailed down, it's free", or "Nothing says 'you're the only one for me' like gonorrhoea" and "If a stranger offers you drugs, say thank you, because drugs are expensive".

She dropped to the ATM as soon as the two cops were out of sight. She could still hear them, but they weren't likely to notice her in return. They were way too loud, as most comedy acts.

"Where the hell are you_ going_?" Gordon was asking.

"To buy myself another cheeseburger, you bastard. It's not like the guy's gonna walk away before the coroner arrives, and I'm _not_ skipping lunch for some dumbfuck junkie."

There were things that Selina liked about Bullock, she thought as she collected the bills that were still in the drawer - the ones you couldn't see when you entered the room, as Gordon would notice if she grabbed all the cash sprayed on the ground around his fire scene. He apparently couldn't be bothered to do cop things when he wasn't on the clock, something a pickpocket was bound to appreciate. He also was very well adjusted to Gotham. That didn't make him less of a slimy asswipe, but it was the kind of slimy asswipe petty thieves could work with.

"Can you at least _pretend_ to be decent? A man died."

"He had it _coming_. Is it my fault that he was so much of a stoner that he decided to get high on - probably - drain cleaner?"

"You are drunk from dawn to dusk."

"Hey! That is a vicious lie", said Harvey just as Cat climbed back on a beam, from where she could observe the two men.

The eldest punctuated his sentence by taking out a flask out of his coat and pouring its contents down his throat.

Gordon rolled his eyes. He was not hostile towards his partner, she noted. Once upon a time, he used to be. She was not sure the change was a good thing.

"You ass. Alright, alright. Go get your burger. Don't take the whole afternoon."

Harvey grunted, smiled, and walked away.

"And bring me one!" Jim called after him.

Terrible things had happened and, for once, Natalia had blissfully not noticed. There had been two days of hell in the streets, with people going crazy and crumbling to pieces, and she had spent it all at home, scrubbing her one room flat with lemon scented detergent. No TV (who could afford that shit?), no radio (she got enough of that in bars, thank you very much), just the faint screaming of the couple four stories down, and the high heels of the bitch upstairs.

Then she had slept, and gone to work, and learned about Viper.

"Fuck", she had said when Marsha broke the news, because what was there to say?

On the upside - if there was an upside - most of the girls weren't out, which meant tons of money, and a fully paid rent in a night, and maybe even a few days not worrying about food. On the downside, _fuck_. Tanya had gone to visit family, because the cousin of a cousin had taken the stuff, and punched a wall, and splattered himself on it. Vivian had had a scare with some stoned gangbanger and had wisely decided that the Suicide Slums, in Metropolis, sounded more promising than Gotham for a while. Plenty of others were nowhere to be seen. Those who remained needed their meth, or needed their crack, or - like Marsha - were so buried in debt that their loan sharks had to take out loans to cover their losses.

When Harvey arrived a bit before midnight, her lady parts were on fire and her face ached from pretend-smiling to men she pretend-liked. She groaned. She couldn't help it. And then, because he had noticed and lifted a brow, she buried her face in her arms and groaned again.

She liked Harvey. She really liked Harvey. But if he needed a therapist or a drinking buddy, tonight was not the night. She kept her nose in her elbow as he came nearer, took Marsha's hand, and kissed it with reverence.

"You can feel the love", he remarked with a chuckle, and what Natalia imagined was a look in her direction.

"Come on, Harv'", said Marsha in that lovely, smiling, tipsy voice of hers. "This is not a slow night. You can't drink with us, you're making us lose opportunities here!"

She always sounded more tipsy when she wasn't drunk, because she was a wise, wise girl, and knew no one would expect conversation from her if she pretended to be addled. Marsha always seemed friendly with customers yet never _was_, and Natalia kind of envied that skill. As aggravated as _she_ was with the human race, she could not turn off liking people.

"Aw, don't be like that. I was just coming to check if you were okay, what with the whole Viper thing."

"That's sweet, sweetie. We're just fine, the drug didn't make it to this part of town. I reckon the guy knew Fish would off him in like ten minutes or so."

"Mh, he couldn't have cared less, actually. Regular nutcase, handed off the stuff at random. But anyway he _is_ dead, offed himself quite nicely, so nothing left to worry about."

Natalia lifted her head.

"Your case, then?"

"Yeah."

She sighed. She could see where this was going. Shitty days meant Harvey didn't want to be sober, and didn't want to be alone, and would spend as much cash as necessary not to be.

"Marsha's right, you know? This is a busy night."

"Ah well then", he replied, and he got his wallet out and started counting the bills.

She sighed and she laughed and she followed him out.

Half an hour later, it was clear some things were not happening.

Harvey rolled to the side and ran a hand over his face.

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_!" he swore, and Natalia knew it wasn't about his failure to perform, just about not getting the chance to wipe his mind clear that he was longing for.

She touched his shoulder, and he sat up and smiled.

"Let's just get back, there's actually another thing I wanted to discuss with you and the girls."

What he wanted, it turned out after they joined Marsha in the bar, was a private investigator. Something had come up about somebody, and he needed someone to hang around some art gallery for some days. A lot of "some".

"Stoooop right there", Natalia said. "I heard art gallery. That means Diamond District. That means we'd be a wee bit out of place. Also, what the hell?"

Marsha, who was more detached, smiled and waved her hand.

"Sweetie, we're not going on a stakeout for you. You're homicide and all. That sounds like no fun at all."

He grunted.

"It's not work, it's a personal thing, really. We were looking into Viper and turns out a friend I owe a service to had intel, and long story short, one of his fuckwad godsons might have borrowed from the wrong people to pay for his blow. So I'm supposed to send someone to watch him for a while, and you can guess how sending a cop babysit a a cokehead might backfire."

That was a lie as good as any, especially coming from Harvey Bullock, who didn't bother trying to make it sound true or anything. Natalia knew he wouldn't endanger them, but that didn't warm her up to the idea of a surveillance mission.

"So what you need is what, professional loiterers? And who is the kid?"

"Yep, that's about it. I need to check that he's not being followed by thugs or anything. And the name is Anthony Parker. He's holding an exhibition at the Keane Gallery", said Bullock, and holy hell, it was about Gordon's girlfriend.

Natalia wasn't having any of it. She threw a glance at Marsha, who wasn't having any of it either, for more mercenary reasons (she didn't take unpaid gigs). Of course, Bullock caught that look, and understood, but actual words were still in order. The younger woman smiled to Natalia, then giggled, and patted the cop's hand.

"We're waaay too classy and fancy for Diamond District, honey. We'd be noticed. I'm so sorry."

"S'allright", he said with a cheeky grin. "It was worth a shot. Have a great and lucrative night, the two of you, and thanks. Thanks", he repeated to Natalia in particular.

She nodded, smiled, and wished him good night.

"You care too much", Marsha commented once he was gone. "That will bite you in the ass."

"Don't I know that..."


	6. A hundred percent nuthouse crazy

"What I don't get", Jonathan said, "is that you're homicide. There's no murder. What is it you're lookin' for?"

The cop, a nasty piece of fat and facial hair, looked more like a criminal than most of the criminals of the Diamond District. If he hadn't shown his badge, the guard would have escorted him out, preferably through the back door, and none too gently.

"Just following up on the Viper case", the man explained. "A great many so-called artists get their, uh, inspiration in the slums. We're trying to locate any other victim, people who would have gone missing around that time. We found one or two already. Also, if you wanna point out strange goings-on or suspicious people around the place, now is the time."

"Listen, you can talk to the boss if you need to, but you might have to wait for a while, he's busy with customers."

"He? Wasn't the owner that Keane lady?"

"Oh, Miss Keane isn't really involved in the day to day operations. She's more of a public figure, she only comes to the exhibitions, or the galas. I was talking about the gallery manager. He's the one who deals with everything."

"That jittery guy in the black suit? Met him. He wasn't very interested in talking to me. Told me everyone is accounted for, but I get the feeling he'd have said the same thing if the queen of England had vanished on live TV."

That sounded like Mr. Caskey. He wasn't going to encourage disreputable visitors to hang around the gallery.

"Everyone _is_ accounted for, detective. I've seen Anthony Parker and Aaricia Hopes yesterday. They're the ones I'd have worried about. But the kind of painters we work with? Very high profile, famous people. Their staff would have raised hell. As for suspicious strangers around? None, I would have spotted them."

The cop looked around, and scratched his neck for a few moments.

"Parker, he's the one who makes that dot stuff, right?"

Jonathan, whose neck was now itching, nodded. There were paintings of polka dots everywhere in the building. Red polka dots on a white background. Pink polka dots on a white background. Rainbow polka dots. Golden polka dots. Glow-in-the-dark polka dots. Every piece had a fancy name and a fancier price tag.

"Yep", he answered.

As far as he was concerned, the rooms were full of "whatever". Even Parker himself agreed, seeing how he drunkenly bragged about selling five minutes worth of stencil shit for a few dozen grands.

"What about Barbara Keane?", Bullock continued. "Seen her lately?"

"Not this week, and that's not unusual. But if you want to check on her, just go ask her boyfriend, I hear he is a cop."

The detective snorted.

"Yeah, I guess I'll try that."

###

Vulnerability was easy to spot. It was in the posture, the eyes, the pattern of breathing, in the hand gestures, in _everything_. Detecting it was an easy skill to acquire, and one that "detective" Jim Gordon had yet to master.

A more sensible man would have noticed his partner was coming apart at the seams, especially after that outburst. A more sensible man would have asked himself "why?". But he was oblivious to detective Bullock's feelings, and thus reacted to that _very_ revealing tirade with simple exasperation. Sharon _loved_ a man so wrapped up in his own problems that the issues of others went right over his head. You didn't have to worry about him being _too_ observant while investigating the murder you had committed.

"Thank you, doctor", he had said as she left.

And he didn't spare her a second look because he was so _angry_. Instead, he glared at Bullock, who had scratched at the rage the younger man kept bottled inside.

She didn't have to worry about Gordon. Bullock, however... She was not sure. Oh, he was dissolving. That quip about tranquillizers samples? "Look at me, the addict". But to him, the case was personal. It had broken detective Dix's spine, and Harvey's spirit.

Sharon had kept tabs on him after Milkie's death. And how he had collapsed, that self-assured, heroic young cop. He had found comfort in alcohol, the occasional drugs and - if the rumours were to be believed - in the arms of a crime boss. If they weren't, there was enough evidence of his _other_ destructive relationships, before he had given up on his own self-worth entirely and settled for prostitutes.

He wasn't as sharp as ten years before - he couldn't be, substance abuse did_ terrible_ things to one's brain - and he wasn't as full of hope. If, by a stroke of luck, he ended up finding Raymond, he would be only too willing to arrest his "copycat" and put the whole business to rest. He didn't have it him to dig deeper. If he couldn't heal his festering wounds, he would at least try to keep them closed.

###

The last forty-eight days had been a roller-coaster of Jim-Harvey drama. If you were honest about it, it was HARVEY drama with a little slice of Jim, a bit like the ratio of meat to vegetables Theresa's kids insisted on when she filled their plates.

The first mass-email had arrived in the morning, from one of the lab guys, with no explanation whatsoever.

"Stay out of Bullock's way."

The general reaction at the GCPD had been "What the hell?", along with "Does anyone know what's happening?" and a few "We already do". No one had any idea of what the warning was about, so people had started speculating. A few had even attempted to bet on it, but that didn't work out too well since _everyone_ believed Gordon had acted like an asshole again. It had taken thirty minutes for clarification to arrive, in the form of a text message sent to Smith by an old beat cop who was somehow aware of the commotion.

"Goat cpkt", it had said.

"What does CPKT mean?" Smith had asked.

"Copycat, why?"

"Then what does GOAT mean because I don't get it?"

People had understood there was something really bad going on when Sarah Essen had spoken the name of the lord in vain, while describing his sexual kinks. She had raced back to her office and as good as slammed the door.

"Goat", Alvarez had explained. "It just means Goat copycat. It's an old case, ten years ago."

"The Dix thing", another voice had chimed in from upstairs.

"Shit", several people had muttered.

So they _had _stayed out of Harvey's way, which was probably wise because he looked about to explode or to break. Jim, who made Edward Nygma look like the poster kid for social interactions, had not noticed. The rest of the GCPD had been so set on avoiding Bullock and Gordon that they had no idea of the progress of their investigation until they brought in the murderer.

"They were hugging", one of the cops who had brought the guy to the GCPD had volunteered, as everyone knew that there were ongoing bets on when the dynamic duo would end up in bed.

He had refused to clarify, and kept a poker face until his departure. Some had believed his story, because Bullock had been warming up to his partner, even been nice for days on end, shown signs of concern.

Just after they came back, he had seemed happy, very happy (one would be, after closing the worst case of one's career for the second time), enough for some to consider reminding him that the white lines on the parking lot were meant to be _around_ a car and not under it. But then he had looked depressed again, and had left for another few hours, and then he had been called to Essen's office after shooting a pretty, blonde, elegant doctor in psychology who worked for the richest families in town. And then MCU had brought in Jim Gordon, and everyone had discovered what he had done to get in line with the "program". Or not done, because he was apparently insane and suicidal, and Oswald Cobblepot was alive and limping.

All of the bets on the two detectives would come to nothing, it turned out, because they wouldn't survive the night.

#######


	7. Doomed

Butch took pleasure in his work. There was no shame in that. Sure, it wasn't always pleasant, and sometimes you had to kill people who probably didn't deserve it, but on the whole, it was wildly entertaining. Working for Fish meant you got to be creative, even a bit over the top, instead of limiting yourself to wearing fancy ties. You got _insanely_ fun days. Like most of the days that involved Jim Gordon. Alright, they weren't always "fun", per se, but you were never bored.

He leaned back into his car seat, finished his burger, ate his fries, and sipped his soda. Barbara Keane's flat, from the outside, looked fancy. That clock was a thing of beauty. The lady was in - she had answered the "telemarketers" when "they" called her landline - so all he had to do was wait and make sure she didn't leave in the next five minutes. Five minutes was all he could spare, really, but he thought it would be enough.

He had spent quite a bit of time on the phone to clarify what had happened at the GCPD over the last few hours. The cops on Fish's payroll and those who were not impressed by Jim Gordon's delightful personality overlapped quite well, so there was no shortage of guys willing to recount his activities of the day. Being arrested for murder by the MCU. Being released by the MCU, seeing how the man he had murdered had not, in fact, been murdered. Being questioned by the MCU. Being questioned by the GCPD captain. Being held at gunpoint by his partner.

Said partner had left the GCPD six, no, seven minutes before.

Butch's phone started ringing, to the tone of Harold Faltermayer's "Axel F". He picked up.

"Is Fish with you?" Harvey asked. "She's not answering my calls."

"She's not going to answer your calls. She has forgotten about you at the moment, and I figured I'd do you a favour and put your number on her block list so you wouldn't go and remind her of your existence."

There was a pause.

"Is she with you?"

"If I were you, I'd _really_ make good use of that hour you have left before she calms down enough to remember that you were involved in the Cobblepot thing."

"You _have_ to tell her I had no idea! I wouldn't do that to her, she has to know that. I was there when Gordon shot him. It looked legit! Hell, MCU had a witness that saw the same thing I did!"

"MCU could have gotten a witness who saw the same thing you did even if Gordon had been in Switzerland when the shooting happened", Butch pointed out. "Please get out of town. You know I'm not doing this for you. If Fish gets around to getting you killed, you _know_ she'll regret it afterwards. You don't want her sad, do you?"

"I just need to explain –"

"You didn't check the job was done. I get it. You fucked up. And in a few weeks, she'll see it. She's fond of you. But give her time."

Butch wasn't entirely sure of why Fish was so forgiving. There were rumors, from nearly ten years before, that he had been one of the boys "she kept around for exercise" (though Butch could not picture it, since Harvey had always been a bit on the chubby side). And even _that_ hadn't helped Lazlo. Yet, Harvey had attempted to arrest her at gunpoint, if you listened to the wild tales of the old staff of the club, and he wasn't buried in an unmarked grave in the woods. There was probably a better explanation to her fondness towards him, but thinking about it left Butch with a knot in the pit of his stomach, so he didn't.

"I know I should have _checked_, I just thought the kid would be more comfortable popping his cherry in private. I didn't imagine he would pull something like that! I don't even know what to do now. He's been lying about it for weeks now and... I trusted him, for god's sake. I trusted him and I helped him and I tried to save his ass over and over again! Why do we do this to ourselves?"

"This?"

"Like with Fish. Don't think for a second I think that all you do for her is about your job, because it isn't, and oh, I get it. We get close to someone, and we try to help, over, and over and over again and _again_. But they're _angry_ and they're _obtuse_ and they won't listen, _ever_. And you keep reaching out, and when you give them a hand they have to tear it off at the shoulder, and they never_, never_ notice. They don't care about what you do or feel at all."

"I'm confused, are you telling me that you want to sleep with Jim Gordon?"

If he wanted to, ugh. If he _had_, it would be nice to know, because maybe going after Barbara Keane was not the best option.

"What the... No, dumbass! I meant I thought he was my _friend_."

"You're either too drunk or not enough, or you wouldn't be telling me this. And I'm not the person to talk to. Please get a therapist. In another town."

"I got a therapist a few hours ago. In the leg."

Butch frowned, confused, and Bullock took his silence for a clarification request.

"It's kind of a long story, she was hypnotising her patients into killing people and she sent one of them after me so I had to shoot her and arrest her."

Gilzean had to pause at that.

"I'm sure you can find a better therapist", he said. "Just do. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm on the job. Try not to waste the time I gave you and don't get killed by Falcone either."

###

Vivian didn't take money and safety very seriously. The Suicide Slums of Metropolis had earned their name for a reason, sure, but with crimes rates that low and earning rates that good for hookers, it sounded more like Gotham's Diamond District than it did the Theather District, let alone the Bowery. But she "had no friends there", she had said. "It didn't feel like home". So she had come back. The _idiot_.

What Vivian took seriously was her name, and her circumstances. Especially on Karaoke Night. She _loved_ Karaoke Night and would always be the first to climb on the scene. Her opening song of choice was "Kiss", by Prince, of course. Every time. That one wasn't too bad, actually. It was a simple, catchy song, and while Viv' would never be an opera singer, her voice was decent enough. And it wasn't a weepy romantic ballad.

The _next_ song, however...

"Oh please, please not again", Tanya moaned.

She had just arrived, and not for the best part of the evening.

Marsha closed her eyes. She was grateful she had stopped feeling emotions a few years before, because if she hadn't, she was certain she would have snapped and murdered Roxette's lead singer. Every. Time. That song could drill a hole through your brain. The entirety of it was terrible, but the chorus would induce a migraine faster than its first line ended.

"I thought you had paid the owner to 'accidentally' delete 'It must have been love' from the tracks list."

"I _did_. She went and bought a new copy. Where's Natalia?"

"Outside freaking out. Did you hear the news?"

"News?"

"Jim Gordon has double-crossed Don Falcone."

"Oh _shit_. Any word from Harvey?"

Marsha shrugged.

"God, no wonder Natalia is freaking out."

"She cares too much. He's just a john, she should learn not to grow attached."

"Not everyone is as detached as you are", Natalia cut in from behind her, "though I _wish_ I was."

She collapsed back into her chair and gluped down her batida. She was shaking.

It was to be expected, Marsha thought. She had known him eight years, and he'd been her regular for more than half of those. He was more her friend than her customer, though Marsha doubted he returned the sentiment. He was nice to all of them equally, and if he visited Nat' more often, it was probably because she was more to his taste.

She had admitted once that she owed him for something he had done when she was a teenager, but many of the girls could say the same and yet didn't feel any specific affection for him.

Vivian was still singing, but they had somehow managed to tune it off. Then she stuttered, and shouldn't have, because she knew that song in and out and could recite it in her sleep.

"It's where the water bl...flooows... It's where the wind flows..."

They turned to her, then followed her shocked stare towards the door.

"Fuck", Tanya said.

Natalia went whiter than a dead white chick.

Marsha breathed in. Of course, while being chased by the mob, the first place Harvey Bullock would come to was his favorite bar in town. You couldn't expect him to act like a sane person.

"Hey Maxence, put on my next song!" Vivian shouted to the owner.

Apparently, she owed Harvey too. Max did as he was told. He knew the third song. Everyone did. It was from a movie too, but it wasn't a ballad. It was the song Viv' picked when she had spotted a potential customer with money and needed to move in for the kill. She had a whole act to go with it, and it started by unbuttoning her shirt to show off her bra to the audience.

That always got everyone to turn her way.

"People", she called as she brandished her shirt above her head. "Touch-a, touch-a, _touch_ _me_!"

Natalia was the only person still staring at the door, where Harvey was swaying and hesitating. She started to stand, but Marsha pushed her back onto her seat.

"I'll deal with him, I'll get him away. I _will_", she insisted when her friend tried to protest. "If I'm caught with him, they'll know I don't give a shit. You'd get killed."

###

Marsha was smart. Well, she had thought she was, and by her family's standards, she had been right. She had been an amazing high-school student who had worked her ass off, enough to be accepted to Gotham University _and_ a few others. She had gone to GU because it was closer to home, and she could keep living with her parents. Of course, as a law degree was expensive and her dad had a factory job, and her mother was a cashier, she had applied for every scholarship under the sun. She had gotten none.

She had a dream, back then, and it was that she would be a moderately corrupt attorney in Gotham, so she could take a few kickbacks to repay her six-figures student loans. She didn't think she had acted more or less stupidly than any gifted nineteen years old girl with ambition.

Then she had simply not been smart enough.

She had dropped out after two years.

Ironically, she had learned a lot more about law afterwards.

"Harvey, just get in the car, and _then_ I'll drive us somewhere", she told the very drunk, very uncooperative cop she had dragged out of the bar. "Fuck, why did you even come? What are you even doing in Gotham?"

He groaned and buried his head in his hands.

"I don't remember. Something about checking Nat' was safe. Fish knows I like Nat'."

"Why would you go and tell a mob boss that you like someone? Are you brain damaged or something?"

He groaned some more, and she pushed his massive frame down, hoping he would fall into the car. He barely swayed, which was impressive considering he'd been wobbling like a walking pudding all the way to the parking lot. But he understood her seriousness, and sat down on his own.

"Thank you, Harvey", Marsha said before slamming the door in his face.

Ten minutes later, she had driven them halfway across town, and intended to keep going until they reached Kansas. Her passenger had been blessedly silent. She preferred that. She could deal with a brooding Harvey Bullock. That was "normal" Harvey Bullock.

She drove on.

"You're not scared", he remarked a little later, when she crossed Pioneer's bridge for the third time. "You're running in circles, and I think you've noted the mob is watching the roads out of Gotham and we can't go anywhere, so why aren't you pissing yourself?"

She had ran out of fear years before, along with everything else.

It hadn't been that bad at first. So she didn't have a degree? She'd work another job, any job, until her loans were repaid. And she had. Of course, she had needed a car for that, so she had borrowed a little more. Then her parents had moved to California and sold the house to finance their retirement, and she had to rent a flat. Then, elbow surgery after a bad fall, and there was only so many sick days her work allowed, so unpaid rent, living in her car, until the car was repossessed. Then she had filed for bankruptcy and attempted to get her debts discharged, but no such luck. And then she had borrowed again, because Gotham was cold all year long but January was a bitch. Then she had done what she had to to keep the loan shark happy. Then she had done it with other men. Then she had ended every day rolled up in a ball, sobbing and terrified, until she had somehow fallen so low that everything stopped to matter.

She didn't remember how anything but despair felt, but she didn't feel desperate anymore. It left her blank.

So she had started getting shit done. One step at a time, money, money, money.

"I'm not", she answered as she parked the car. "There's no point. Now what about you tell me where to go, before I decide to check if Don Falcone would give me two hundred thousand dollars for your sorry hide?"

"I don't think I'm worth a penny, but he'd probably extend some influence to get your debts cancelled. Or the lenders."

"Not helping your case here."

"Sorry."

"How did you even end up in a mess like that? I mean, there was a shooting at the GCPD? When in the last fifty _decades_ has the police caused the slightest trouble for the Families?"

"Oh, it was all about _Jim_. I hear they sent Zsasz after the backstabbing, lying son of a bitch. He had me _believe_ he did what Falcone wanted. He let me go and tell Falcone it was done! He let me defend him for _weeks_. He'd piss off Fish and what would I say? 'Remember when he killed that snitch of yours? He can be controlled'. Now she thinks I lied to her face. If I'm lucky, Don Falcone _only_ thinks I'm an idiot, but I'm doomed anyway."

"God, I need to be drunk for this."

He handed her a bottle. She took a sip, because she figured she'd better look and smell like a brewery if the mob got to them. A drunk prostitute was worthless, so they could kill her without a moment's hesitation, but then again why would they bother? It had a fifty percent chance to save her life, and that was more than she could hope for as a sober witness.

"Why don't you just drag his corpse back to Fish and call it a day?"

"I should. I really _should_. Except not Fish, I'm not suicidal. Fish is bipolar." He breathed in. "Holy Christ, why did I even bother _trying_ to help the guy? Why did I even try to _befriend_ him? All he has ever done is go after that fucking crusade of his, being angry at everyone, antagonizing everyone, never stopping for a second to consider who he's going to hurt in the process."

He paused, and drank, and groaned, and drank some more. Then he rested his forehead on the passenger seat.

"Holy fuck, I have a _type_."

"Beg your pardon?"

"I just described my ex-girlfriend. Interesting relationship, that one. Ended at gunpoint."

"Why does that not surprise me?"

"Just drive. Please."

"I still don't know were we're going."

He hesitated, then sighted.

"Jim's flat, I guess. I'll show you the way."

"Are you going to kill him? Just so I can mentally prepare my escape plan, I mean."

There was a long, long silence. Marsha started driving towards the nicest parts of town, since she had no instructions yet.

"He's a good man", Harvey muttered.

Then he grinned and opened another bottle.

###

Marsha kissed Harvey as he led her to the door of the flat. She had heard all of Jim Gordon's ideas, and considered all of them insane. She knew he would be raiding Don Falcone's estate, with a very low chance of coming back. She wasn't one to argue and plead, however, and she didn't actually care, so she just kissed him, and said:

"Consider this is from Natalia, who is your friend. Do not die."

###

"Heroes, Victor, are quite fragile. Sticks and stones will never harm them, but words will break their bones. Which is why I could let them go."

Carmine watched as Zsasz tensed and shivered, and fought with himself to keep a neutral expression. As the head of his family, he had taken in or worked with a variety of people and monsters. He had kept a firm control on most of them, though one had to accept that betrayal would come eventually, sometimes from one's most cherished friends. Out of all those people and monsters, Victor was the most dangerous yet, because his insanity was rooted in compulsion, and because that compulsion would grow the more he fed it. He would excel at what he did, until what he did became what he was. At that point, he would have to be put down. In the meantime, Carmine could provide the control the young man so needed. And not only did he need it, he craved it. Wolves of his kind would not be tied down against their will. He let himself be fed scraps when he could have been hunting in the streets.

"They will lose all fear of you."

"They never had that fear to begin with. If anything, they discovered it in themselves today. Well, Bullock discovered it years ago. As for Jim Gordon... It was so sweet and juvenile of him to believe he had nothing to lose."

"He had something now, sir. He had Barbara Keane. But - forgive me for doubting you - what will happen when she leaves? Then he'll really have nothing to lose. What will stop him from trying this again?"

"He will still have _everything_ to lose, because heroes are inherently weak and care for everyone. It is of no import that the hostage was his companion. He would have backed off for any innocent we would have dragged in front of him."

"What of Harvey Bullock, then? _He_ had not a care in the world."

Carmine shook his head. He had seen the cop not lose, but run away from everything he had years before, and that time was past.

"You are wrong, Victor. You are very wrong. If he had nothing to lose, he would not have been here today."

###


	8. Asshat

When Sarah had said "Lucky he's got you" to Harvey, when they were discussing how the cops had turned their back to Jim, she had not seen _it_ yet.

She had been distracted for days, that was why. Recurrent phone calls from the commissioner were bad enough when said commissioner wasn't switched without warning a dozen calls in. Jim and Harvey's antics were to blame, as far as she knew. Their attack on both the mayor and Falcone had left a sour taste in the mouth of everyone in power, and change had been as swift as it had been drastic. One could dance with Brady, with enough patience and skill. The same couldn't be said of Boel. He was the picture of ruthless efficiency. He had been scrutinizing the whole department as if running its autopsy. His criticism was heavy with unvoiced threats.

She had been so focused on him, and on dealing with the damage to the GCPD after Zsasz's assault, not to mention the burial of a very good woman, that she had not even once stopped to think about Harvey, and why he followed Jim to a certain death. Harvey _Bullock_, of all people, the most cowardly brave man she knew.

She had said "Lucky he's got you", and five minutes had gone by and she had seen it clear as day. It had taken a few small things, seen from the corner of her eye as she tended to paperwork. Harvey had patted Jim's shoulder. Then a moment had passed and he had teasingly nudged him. Then, he had found another reason to tap his back and Sarah had to go and raise her head to watch them interact, because _oh_, _Harvey_, you poor man.

He was tactile, had always been, letting his fists talk to his enemies and his body to the rest. It would have been more visible had he had friends, but Sarah knew, having been at the receiving end of one or two hugs she _had_ to back away from for matters of rank. But _this_? He was craving contact to the point that he invented upon excuse to bump against or put his hands on Jim. Getting a smile out of his partner - granted, it was an achievement - made Harvey glow with pride. He himself was grinning, and Gordon could not see how revealing that was. He hadn't been around for years to know that, while Harvey smirked easily, his real smiles were scarce.

Eight years miserable, broken and lonely, and when he went and finally developed feelings for someone other than Maria Mooney, it had to be Gordon. Young, male, straight, only-second-in-looks-to-Brad-Pitt Jim Gordon who had a fiancée. Jim who had obtained - and objectively not earned - Harvey's loyalty. Jim who would drag him to hell and back, and maybe not even _back_, if he so wished. Jim who has so far never noticed an extended hand and wouldn't see an offered heart if it was placed bleeding on his desk.

Sarah knew it was in no way his fault, by she found she suddenly liked him a little less, just because he existed.

###

A few hours later, Jim arrested one of Alvarez's informants and no amount of pleading from Harvey could get him to release the man.

Sarah could hear the grumbling and the ranting from behind the closed door of her office. No one around _needed_ one more reason to hate Gordon, but why spit on an opportunity to whine and complain? She was thankful Harvey had left to brood. She didn't want guns drawn in the building for at least a year. The GCPD was well over its quota for shootings.

She had just finished yet another round of telephonic questioning by Loeb when Alvarez burst into her office.

"I don't care what you say about it", he snapped. "If you don't suspend Gordon, you're going to find yourself short of _everyone else_, so if I were you I'd get rid of him _yesterday_."

It was hard to tell if it was a threat or an observation. In truth, it was probably both.

She sighed. Alvarez was a good cop by her standards. He knew how to toe the line while still getting results. He didn't hesitate to work overtime. He closed his cases when possible. She _liked_ Alvarez. He usually didn't pull shit like this.

"Please be patient, he will come around", she replied.

It was her miracle answer to everything concerning Jim Gordon, because there was very little she could say to make him likeable. So she kept her blankest busy expression and used those seven words as a polite dismissal.

"Are you out of your _mind_? He raided Don Falcone's _house_! He as good as got that officer killed! He's putting us all into danger, not to mention actually fucking up our ongoing cases and our rep' with snitches."

"I will not suspend him for doing his job, Carlos, I hope you understand that."

"Doing his... I've had informants _refuse_, flat out refuse to talk to me over the whole Zsasz thing. Reliable guys. Worked with them for years. So while Gordon does his so-called job, we can't do OURS."

"Yes, let's talk about the Zsasz thing and how four dozen cops were facing four hostiles and decided to run away with their tail between their legs."

"You left too."

"And I shouldn't have. Maybe I should stand up straight for once and try to change things. Maybe if we _all_ did what Gordon does, we wouldn't have to cower in fear. Maybe the families wouldn't walk all over us!"

Maybe she should be a teenager again, too. Back then, she still had reachable goals and simple dreams. She appreciated - agreed_ with _- what Jim wanted to do, even though his methods were grinding her gears. But it was hard to find her spine and keep it when her family got birthday cards from Carmine Falcone, even her twice removed cousin in Minnesota.

"If you think that what he does can _help_ then you're blinding yourself", Alvarez commented. "Even Bullock has more sense, and _he_ has hot pants for the man."

The matter of fact way he said it made it clear that it wasn't a figure if speech. And if he had noticed, and so did she, then others had. Homophobia was more than common in the precinct, and she doubted that the likes of Flass or Branden would keep quiet about this. It was bad news for Harvey.

Alvarez saw her horrified surprise and rolled his eyes.

"Don't come and tell me you hadn't noticed, you're not an idiot. And if he didn't want it to be known, maybe he shouldn't have paraded around like a flirting high school girl in bloody detective land."

"I don't see how this is relevant to the conversation we were having, and if I were you, I'd swallow any comments I might have about _this_ topic as it is none of your _fucking business_."

Carlos looked faintly guilty and nodded once.

"I'm not taking back what I said about Gordon and the rest of us."

"I've _heard_ your arguments and I will take them in consideration when Jim starts peddling drugs and taking kickbacks like some of our "best", instead of being a cop. Now I suggest you get out of my office, _yesterday_."

He clenched his jaw but acquiesced and left without further protest.

###

All things considered, the day hadn't ended too poorly. Sarah's men had swallowed some of their resentment towards Jim, and helped Harvey track him down. That Carlos had been the first to give in was as good as an apology, and she had made sure to let him know that it had been accepted.

She tried not to think of Gordon bleeding and shaking with rage, standing between the lunatics he had to fight off on his own. She didn't want to think of the look of tired confusion he gave her when she arrived for a belated rescue. Jim, left alone to face a sociopath armed with a blade, who had told him that he didn't _need _the help of the rest of them.

The day that man would back off would be the day he stopped being himself.

She climbed the stairs to her office, tired to the bone. She had taken half an hour to get a meal at home, and to leave a post-it on the fridge to inform anyone still living there that she was alive. She was exhausted.

She opened the door to her office to find Harvey sitting on her desk, watching her TV. His expression went from transfixed to vaguely curious in the span of a second, then he turned and smiled.

"Hey, captain!"

She pretended not to have seen the slip of his mask, and looked up to the screen. It was the footage of the fight between Jim and Sionis, that a few dozen of the nutcase's employees had watched live. Panem et circenses.

"Harvey. I'd like to remind you that this room is _my_ office even when I'm not occupying it, so would you _please_ stop squatting it?"

"Well gimme a TV then."

"If you wish to review the evidence, we have rooms for that."

Bullock looked up at the screen. Gordon was throwing the sword away from Sionis, whom he had _not_ killed, much to the disappointment of the audience and to Sarah's relief.

"The asshat isn't going to stop, you know?" Harvey said.

"I know. Did he go home?"

"Yes he did, after I told him to. Oh. And after he _thanked me_", he added with a grin.

"He _did_?"

"YES! I was so damn surprised he did that I couldn't process it for thirty solid seconds, too. I should call him an asshat more often, gets the point across apparently."

Sarah chuckled.

"I'd like to remind you that verbal harassment of your colleagues can get you a formal warning, but I guess I should be happy you haven't hit anyone in the crotch this week."

"Well there's a few hours left..."

Sarah smiled and shook her head.

"Go home, Harvey."

He stood, ejected the tape, and went to the door.

"You should take your own advice, you know. You look like you could use some sleep."

She suppressed a yawn and nodded, but still went to her desk and her endless pile of paperwork.

###

When Vivian saw Bullock get out of the hotel with Dorian (who was actually named Trevor, just like Tanya was actually named Jennifer, and who happened to be an ash-blond, muscular, thirty-something male escort), she gaped. Then she grinned. Then she tried to regain her composure and put on a professional, vapid, flirty expression. Then she as good as bounced towards Harvey, and by the time she grabbed his arm, her cheeks hurt from the goofy smile that had escaped her.

"Hellllooooo, there", he said with a fake lewd glance.

She was the resident expert in lewd, though he was quite good at it. She knew "I'm indulging you, girl" looks when she saw them. It wasn't hard, either, because Harvey had never paid for her services even when offered. "Too young", he had once said. "You make me feel like I'm seventy-two and flirting with a toddler."

"Hiiiiiiiiiii, handsome", Vivian answered. "So Marsha told me you're alive!"

"Did she now?"

"Yep. By the way I covered your ass, that's twenty dollars or a karaoke duet, your pick."

"I'm low on cash. Next time I see you, 'kay?"

She acquiesced, and waited twenty seconds.

"So, Doooorian?"

"Are we doing long syllables Friday?"

"Seriously. Dorian? New tastes?"

The man shrugged.

"Was just checkin' something."

"Like?"

"What is this, an interrogation? And don't go and tell Natalia about this."

"Why not?"

He groaned and closed his eyes and breathed in.

"You're cute, I'll give you that, but I don't know how no one ever killed you on account of you asking more questions than a five years old on crack."

"Alright, alright, I'm done. She won't judge, you know?"

"There's nothing to judge. I don't like cock. Not a bit. You can go ask Dorian, if you're so curious."

"Meh. Want me to, like, forget about it forever? Can be done, at the amazingly low price of one karaoke duet."

She wasn't about to let him throw money at her perfectly fine blackmail.

"There's something seriously wrong with your mind and that karaoke thing. And I don't mind that you know. See, I trust you enough with that intel and I _reaaaally_ don't care what you think, so we're fine."

She wrinkled her nose.

"You're an asshat, you know that, right?"

He gaped at her for a second, then started laughing to tears.

###

###

###


	9. Regular saint

Barbara took a deep breath, then another, then another. She sobbed, once, and took a deeper breath still. She needed to calm down, she told herself. She could do it.

Benzos were supposed to relax her. Until recently, they had given her a sense of quiet tranquillity, a pleasant drowsiness that came with slower thoughts and easier days. That was before. Now, she was well over her 4 milligrams a day and she was still shaking, heart thundering at the slightest sound. The slam of a door, or a raised voice, and she would feel a chill course through her, covering her in cold sweats, leaving her with tingling hands and weak knees. She still spent a good part of her days curled up in a corner, though she did feel safer at the gallery than at home. The door to her office was locked and she was _not_ opening it, and they had security guards anyway.

Seeing Harvey Bullock outside terrified her.

Maybe there was something wrong. Maybe Zsasz was after her. Or maybe that other man, the one who worked for the Theather District mob boss. Or maybe Jim had told him she was gone and had sent him to talk to her.

The detective had been hanging around the gallery for a few days, though. He would look around for her car, sometimes leave when he spotted it, or he would go and talk to the guards, sometimes, until Caskey went to ask him what he wanted. "GCPD business", Bullock had answered once. "Now fuck off."

"You'll never know if you don't go and see him", she told herself.

She sobbed again, but stood up, went to the door, and unlocked it. She didn't want to be that weak. She put on her best good girl face, nearly as good as Mother's, though Mother would have appeared pristine and perfect and elegant and respectable. Barbara supposed she looked like a meth addict in a nine hundred dollars dress.

She still walked to the street, poised, graceful, and waited for the cop to notice her. It took half a second. Her her heart couldn't beat at all and felt like a stone tearing up her chest.

"Hey, _Barbara_", he said with a warm smile. "So glad to see you."

A good girl smiled and didn't show anger nor fear.

"Likewise, detective Bullock. What brings you? Mister Caskey tells me you have visited us a few times already."

"Yeah, yeah. No offence, but that guy is kind of a douchebag. I just wanted to check on you. He told me you were 'otherwise occupied'."

A good girl did not show impatience nor temper.

"Did Jim sent you?" she snapped.

Her teeth chattered for a second before she could regain her composure.

The man hesitated, frowned, and took of his hat.

"I'm going to be flirtatious and give ya my arm and you're gonna take it", he said with a charming smile and a cold tone. "And then we're going to walk you to your office where you can sit instead of passing out in the street, and you'll tell me what you're on."

"I'm not on anyt – "

He extended his arm.

She took it, because she was about to start crying right there and now, and it wouldn't do. She managed to hold on until the door to her office closed, then she flat out started wailing. Bullock, unperturbed, let her collapse on the sofa and started browsing through her desk.

She choked on her sobs for a few moments, and had managed to limit herself to sniffling when he finally talked.

"Your doc is a moron if he thinks this is gonna help", he commented as he pocketed a bottle of alprazolam.

She froze at that.

"What do you think you're _doing_?"

"Confiscating potential evidence of prescription abuse. Also, that shit is worth an hefty buck downtown."

"I beg your _pardon_?" she barked, a flash of anger cutting through her fear.

He snorted, smiled, and lifted another box of pills.

"Have you told Jimbo how bad it is?"

"I don't see how it concerns you."

He shrugged.

"It's just, I work with the guy. I like him well enough when he isn't a top grade asshat, but he has his faults. Like he's very good with all the terrain stuff but he's about as observant as a dead lobster. And he's even less good than I am with 'feels', but for what it's worth, he loves you very much so you should _tell_ him."

Barbara fought not to resume crying at that, because she knew Jim did and she still couldn't cope. She had thought for a time that she could feel safe again, even at the apartment, because she could rely on him, but she wasn't sure of that anymore. She wasn't sure she could be strong enough for him to rely on her either.

"It doesn't concern Jim right now", she said, "seeing how we are currently... Taking a break."

Bullock's eyes snapped to her. He looked dumbfounded. So Jim _had not_ sent him. He had not even told him.

"Does he _know_ that?"

She nodded.

"Was it his choice?"

She shook her head.

"Well then... Do what you have to do, I guess. Just take care of yourself, though. He'd feel like shit if you OD'ed."

###

Edward has difficulties understanding the dynamics of lying. He had read a great many psychology books, yet he failed to understand the underlying thought process, the motivations that could push one to fabricate a whole story to cover up a truth. Well, in the case of - say - a murder, it was evident, as there was a clear benefit to not being sent to prison. Sometimes, however, people seemed to lie for no reason at all.

Thus, Edward didn't get why, when Jim Gordon told him that his fiancée had left, Bullock had replied "'Left', left? Where did she go?".

He was fully aware of her departure and her location, seeing how he had requested a log of her ATM transactions, to be updated every hour. Yet, instead of just saying so, he offered relationship advise. Even that seemed... Purposeless. Gordon didn't know where the woman had gone. Surely, it would be more useful to just direct him to her so he could go talk to her and attempt to patch things up.

But Edward wasn't very good at the whole communication thing, though he tried hard. Surely, Harvey knew better.

###

"So what kind of warning do I get today, captain?" Harvey asked as he entered Sarah's office late in the evening, well after his case was closed.

"None. Absolutely none. I wouldn't say things went smoothly, but Mayor James was only mildly insulted today, the precinct wasn't raided by lunatics, the body count was under twenty, the bombers were either arrested or taken out, and I don't think you did anything worse today than steal Collins' doggy bag from the fridge, but I can't prove it, so you're in the clear. Close the door."

He paused, then did as ordered.

"You're real reassuring, you know that? Who died?"

Sarah rolled her eyes.

"I just had some questions about your use of the GCPD's resources. Care to tell me why you had Barbara Kean's bank records pulled?"

"Uh, no?"

"Aaaand now I have cause for a warning, 'disobeying direct orders'. Do you want that warning?"

"That wasn't an order, that was a question. And it's Jim's private business."

"So I suppose if I go and ask him why you did that, he'll tell me?" she said.

She didn't want to dance around the topic for hours, and Harvey clearly had something to hide. He had been cautious around Jim for a few days, not as tactile as he used to, and clearly more aware of the curious looks his fellow cops had started throwing his way.

Still, she didn't see how that related to Barbara Kean.

"He doesn't know I did that, don't go telling him. He's just not spending a lot of time home, and he seems a bit unimaginative about what some freaks could do. I sent an ex P.I. friend tail her so he could warn me if anything went down. I just needed to find her first."

"I have men watching their building and her gallery already", Sarah countered.

"Which would help a lot if she actually went there but - _and I didn't tell you this_ - the lady bolted."

Sarah just looked at him.

"I called Fish", he added. "Just to test the waters, see if she had calmed down or if we could expect more visits from Butch, and..."

God, the man was suicidal, and a masochist to boot.

"You called Fish Mooney. _You called Fish Mooney_. I thought we had decided you wouldn't call Fish Mooney until I made sure she had cooled down about you. Just like the previous time she attempted to have you killed!"

He tensed at that, and his tone went from sullen to icy.

"With all due respect, captain, for all matters concerning Maria, I will do as I _fucking bloody please_. Just because I let you handle her once doesn't mean you get to manage my personal life from that point on."

Sarah backed off, because he hadn't said _Fish_, and she really, really should have been more careful with her words.

"You're right. I'm sorry. Did she calm down?"

"I think so. I'm still worried about Zsasz, though. The guy has a hard-on for Jim and now he knows where to find the girl he fancies. So now the worthless lying cunt of a whore might be AWOL, but at least she'll be safe."

Well, that was informative.

"I suppose you didn't tell me that either."

"I'm not taking it back, if that's what you mean. Just don't go and repeat it to Gordon."

###

###

###


	10. The only one who waits for back up

Notes:

I just wanted to thank you SO MUCH for your comments. It means a lot to me and really gives me a kick in the bottom to keep writing.

Also, there's a "sister fic" to this chapter that I have only posted on my AO3 account (Extra time by metawohoo, google it, FFnet removes the link), it covers the last scene from Jim's POV.

Also FFnet is a nightmare to post on and removes all separators that aren't "#", my links, sometimes my formatting, and my sanity, so I tend to update on AO3 first.

##########################

Harvey Bullock had the long suffering looks and reactions of someone well used to Jim Gordon's spectacular imbecility. He was also not very smart, which made them well matched. His particular brand of investigating was not one that yielded the most credible results, but Alfred was willing to put up with them - or ignore them and grease the way with a few bills, more like - if it meant finding Bruce. Bullock had connections, and they would be more than needed to repair the catastrophic mess Gordon had caused. While Alfred could have followed the same tracks on his own, he would have lost a considerable amount of time along the way, so the detective came in handy, as a walking and talking map.

Being led to "Fish" was most useful. He let Bullock work on her for a moment, enough to see that the cop was vastly overestimating his influence on her. From the way he acted, he either had something on her, or something _with_ her. Seeing how she toyed with him, the later explanation was probably the right one. Still, they were both playing cards that would never work again. When she adjusted his tie, he did not even blink.

At that point, Alfred moved in, and got what they came for. There would be hell to pay someday - that woman was not one to forget a favour - but one had better tend to the pressing matters first.

Once Miss Mooney departed to give the promised phone calls, Harvey Bullock apologized, actually apologized, on behalf of his partner.

"He doesn't think. That's his problem. He means good. No, more than that. He means _right_."

"Everything in his way be damned", the butler commented. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say. I believe I'll accept that apology the day it comes from the man, though. Maybe he should even direct it at Master Bruce, seeing how he has done naught but endanger him and hurt him."

"Yeah. I _told_ him this case was _closed_."

"I would rather it weren't. That being said, informing Master Bruce of the framing of Mario Pepper? Most unwise."

Bullock cringed.

"He did that? What am I asking? Of course he did that. Go and tell the little boy who has closure, _why not_?"

"Yes. I've grown gradually... Disenchanted with detective Gordon, lately."

The other man sighed.

"If it's any consolation, if he promised the boy to solve the fucking case, he'll do it or die trying. That being said, I'll bash his head in a little for you, if you want. I was going to do it anyway, I'll throw a few more punches in for you."

"How very generous of you, detective."

###

The day had been good for Fish. Alfred Pennyworth owed her, Jim Gordon was out of the way (sent to Arkham where he so clearly belonged), and on top of that, two orphans had not died. That last part was more like those little decorative silvery sugar pearls on the cake: unnecessary, unwanted, but still sweet. The icing was _absolutely_ the Gordon part.

The cherry was that, for the first time in seven years or so, Harvey had acted as if he was out of love with her, which was good. It stung, of course. Sure, the Maria Mooney who had loved him was long gone, and Fish knew how to keep her ghosts buried, but _still. _Seven years under the bridge and she still felt that little pang of _something_ when he walked through the door, though she was not weak and would have him killed without a moment's pause. She had proven that.

She still felt that pang when he arrived that evening, smiling and flirty and all _him_.

"Aren't you lovely tonight?" he said, hat pressed to his chest.

"Aren't you suicidal?" she asked back, rolling her eyes.

But she smiled, as you didn't slip out of ten years of _that_ as easily as you shed a glove. He kissed her on the cheek.

"I wanted to thank you for what you did today. Meant a lot. I hope the old man makes it worth your while."

She snapped her fingers at a waiter and sat down, waiting for her drink. Harvey took the seat facing hers.

"He will. Now what about you tell me how you got pulled into Gordon's suicide mission _again_?"

"Get me one of that", he shouted at the waiter. "And hell if I know. The kid is a public menace, that's what he is. At least he's out of my hair and I'm getting paired up with someone else. I'm reasonably sure I won't ever be at war with you again, Fish."

Once upon a time, she had told him that only her friends were allowed to use that name. Back then, he was one of the few to still call her Maria, and the only one she tolerated it from. When he had come back to her, well after they were over and done, the first thing he had said was "Hello, Fish". A grin, two words, and nothing else. It meant "are we still friends?", and as long as she didn't correct him, she supposed they were.

It didn't matter to him were they stood or how bad things were, he'd use that trick every time he waltzed into her club. He didn't care how angry she was, how much he had fucked up, he'd still come back and act as if nothing had happened. Confidence went a long way, so why show fear? In that, they were much alike.

"So how much do you want the pretty boy?" she asked, taking the martini handed to her by the waiter.

She had seen him fall in love before, and it had been an unmitigated disaster. She knew the signs.

"Uh..."

"Can't see no other explanation to your acting like you do, Harvey. You were always a fool for love."

He drained his own martini in one sip.

"One, that's crazy talk. Second, if you go and say 'full of fire', I'm liable to deck you in the face. Three, even if it were not crazy talk, it's none of your business, is it?"

She patted his tie and adjusted it, and he barely even noticed the touch. No flushing, no _pining_. And it stung, but it was for the best. One less thing keeping her weak.

"No", she answered, "I guess it isn't. Though as a concerned friend, I'd tell you your taste in men is just terrible."

"Like hell it is. If he were a bit less of a self-righteous idiot, you'd be all over his cock."

"Will you ever stop being crass?"

"Can't see that happening, Fish. Ever."

###

Harvey's way to invite people to an evening out was about as subtle as his imagery.

"I'm picking you up for an evening out in twenty minutes", he had said, peeking into her office without bothering to knock first. "Try not to start on anything that takes too long."

"You _what_?" she had shouted, but he was out already, so she had to chase him across the GCPD to clarify her position on being conscripted for evening outs.

"Please, please come", he had begged. "I told Jim I would invite a few people for a drink, and I did, so Ed will be there, and that Mary Something lady will be there, and Collins because I promised I'd invite a few of my favourite girls, and Alvarez because I told him you were coming."

"You invited Ed?" she said, touched. She liked Ed.

"I invited _everyone_. It went even worse than I expected, so you're coming."

She had groaned, and sighed, but she had still found herself sitting in a seedy bar for karaoke night, sitting between Mary and Alvarez, and attempting to make small talk with prostitutes. Ed was probably the most comfortable of them in _that_ social context, though Carlos was warming up to the oldest of the women, a blonde named Tanya. There were three others, two quiet ones, and a young ball of energy who started the evening by a very well rehearsed interpretation of "Kiss", by Prince.

Harvey had vanished to "pick up Jim", and Sarah had a feeling he was about as informed of his ex-partner's plans than she had been an hour before. She knew she was right as soon as they arrived, as Jim was being pushed gently but firmly towards the table. He was smiling, one of those hilarious tight smiles of his, and she saw him mouth "I'll kill you for this". Then he sat and smiled again, more warmly, and acted a little more like the birthday girl he was supposed to be.

The rest of the evening went surprisingly well. She got along fine with Carlos and Mary, and that Natalia girl was level-headed and likeable. Jim's banter with Harvey was much funnier when they weren't at each other's throat, and the younger man grew nicer with each glass he emptied. Ed was having discussions on the science of acoustics with the youngest of the working girls, when she wasn't singing or harassing someone to have a duet with her. Collins vanished early, and so did "the Princess of Albania".

At some point, Vivian stopped begging and started blackmailing.

"So, Harvey, I'ma start explaining all of your kinks if you don't come to sing the next one with me."

"Gee, we'll be there all night", he replied, unconcerned.

"I can start with the peg-"

Alvarez threw a peanut at her at that.

"_I don't want to know_", he snapped, turning to Bullock. "You. Move your ass and go with the cute girl. _Right now_."

"If you take it like that", Harvey said, standing up.

They all watched him get on the stage, as Vivian got the bar owner to play the Kinks' "Sunny afternoon". Sarah watched Gordon, who was looking down in bewilderment. Oh, Harv' had been sneaky there. No one had noticed his hand was on Jim's leg, not even Jim himself. She had only noted it when he stood up and removed it, and Gordon seemed to be in the same boat.

He blinked and blinked and shook his head, and emptied his glass again, before turning to the stage.

The rest of the evening quickly got blurry. They all had to sing at some point, because Harvey wasn't one to let them forget _he_ had done it (though he had returned the stage for every Kinks song under the sun), and Ed was not mentally prepared for the wiles of a young girl with ADHD, and everyone else was drunk as a sailor.

They left one by one late into the night, Sarah among the last.

She got out through the back of the bar, fully expecting to pass out in her car and to go to work in dirty clothes six hours later. She stopped dead as soon as she passed the door.

She had been captain for a while, and her missions on the terrain were few and far between, so she had probably lost some of her reflexes over the years, but she was still a cop. She could spot movement and silhouettes, even in dim lights, even from the corner of her eye.

Harvey and Jim were still there, Jim pressed against a wall by his partner, and they were kissing.

She turned her back to them, pretended to fish for her keys, and swiftly walked away.

###

To Jim Gordon, Harvey Bullock was... _Something_.

###

###


	11. Partner

Sarah had never, in her whole life, felt more destroyed and hungover than on the morning following "Karaoke night". She had slept in her car, and her back had turned into a mass of painful knots wrapped in sore muscles, and it didn't feel nearly as bad as her head.

She took solace in the fact that, somewhere, Jim Gordon had to be curled into a ball of pure misery, because she had drunk too much, but _he_ had aimed for acute alcohol poisoning. When _Harvey Bullock _showed concern about your drink intake, something was very wrong. Now that she thought about it, too, she wondered where the "somewhere" was, seeing how she had caught the two men quite busy at the end of the night.

"Hey there, captain", called Harvey from his desk, as she climbed the stairs to her office.

The rotten bastard looked fresh as a daisy. Well, he looked as fresh as he always did, which wasn't much, but he didn't seem hungover. At all. What he seemed was _smug_ at her state, the ass.

"How are you even _standing_?" she whined.

"Well, I came prepared with ten whole years of a life of dissolution. You never drink."

"Yes, and _never again_", she moaned, patting his shoulder as she passed next to him.

She dragged herself to her office and collapsed onto her chair. Then she stood, closed the blinds, and went back to the seat. She would start working at some point.

Harvey was on the phone outside her door.

"Hey Jimmy boy, I assume you're still passed out", he was saying. "Time to rise and shine, though, because if you don't call me back in the next fifteen minutes, I'm sending a car to check you haven't choked on your own puke."

He didn't follow up on that promise. An hour later, when Sarah started her daily round from desk to desk, he was filing paperwork and hadn't called anyone. When she came back to her office at eleven, though, she found her door closed, as Harvey had claimed the room as his own again. She would really have to make her opinion on squatting clearer.

He was on the phone, and she could hear him even through the door.

"Well, you know me, I was all for it, but some people call that _rape_."

That got a disgusted groan out of Sarah, who barged in.

"Out", she mouthed. "Now."

He could take his private calls at home, where they belonged. He nodded distractedly and walked to the door, and even _waved_ as he got out. She was going to slaughter him someday soon, really.

"Wow, you really think I'm a sleazebag", he told his interlocutor as she closed the door.

The windows weren't that thick that they could muffle his voice, though, so she could still hear him chuckle and tease.

Jim, then.

###

Over the next three weeks, Sarah realized that she should not have gotten used to Gordon being the troublemaker and Bullock the voice of reason (as much as he could be, anyway).

Harvey was exceedingly good at causing trouble on his own, a fact she had sadly forgotten during the months he had spent as Jim's partner, seeing how Jim's brand of trouble was more of the "fireworks in a napalm factory" variety. Bullock was just _exceedingly_ good at being unpleasant.

She had paired him up with a MCU transfer, who was supposed to be though as nails with nerves of steel. The woman had transferred back after ten days, complaining of police brutality and sexual harassment.

"You should suspend the son of a bitch", she had said as she left. "If that's how you run your ship, I get why homicide has such a bad rep'."

Sarah had remained calm and professional and not voiced the "maybe you want my job, you whiny bitch" that had come to her mind. She was usually not much of a profanity person. That vocabulary came to her with suicidal thoughts.

She had suspended Harvey for five days and he had thanked her for the paid vacation. She had called him back after two out of spite.

"The next partner I get you", she had told him, "you play nice with. In the meantime, you stay indoors and I hope you enjoy reviewing every cold case you've worked on in the last thirteen years."

He couldn't be sent out alone, and she _needed_ to make his life as miserable as he did hers.

"Why do you even bother looking? We'll get Jim back one way or another", he had answered.

"Don't hold your breath for that, Harvey."

"Well you know him, he's like cancer, always comes back."

"I believe you start with the Cameron murder. Miss Kringle was nice enough to unearth the case files, she's waiting for you."

He had gone to the records annex without further protest, but gotten into a row with Alvarez the next day, and into a brawl with Tannenbaum in front of the building three days later. Good. Old. Harvey. He was even drinking with Fish Mooney every evening, if the uniforms in the Theater District were not mistaken. If Sarah could have gotten Gordon back, she would have. Bullock's behaviour wasn't just infuriating, it worried her.

In the end, what made Harvey pleasant again was a phone call from Arkham.

"Captain, I'm out", he had announced with a grin. "Jim called, inmates are being assaulted in his nut house! This should be _fun_."

###

Jim's life at Arkham was exactly what you could expect from a punitive job in a centuries old gothic mansion used as an cage for mentally ill criminals. It was bad.

The first week had been soul-crushing. The place didn't elicit cheerfulness to begin with. Going in with the worst feeling of isolation in his life hadn't helped. Barbara, who was the only person he wanted to talk to, and by all means the one he missed the most, hadn't returned a single phone call. The slow realisation that his relationship wasn't merely dying, but was nearly buried already had been agonizing.

His complete and utter failure to change something_, anything_ in Gotham wasn't a subject worth contemplating either. It was one thing to tell Harvey he would not quit, that he would bring down every corrupted figure in the city, but you needed strength for that, and felt like he had already emptied every last recess of his will.

And Harvey, of course. The Monday of the second week, the detective had dragged him to a bar, for an evening that had gone surprisingly well up to the point Jim had gotten so drunk that he had _kissed_ him. That had earned him seven hours of absolute misery, twisting sleepless in bed as a shivering mass of nerves, too busy examining every damn second of what had happened behind that bar to even think of closing his eyes. Being turned on like a teenage boy, kissed back, pushed away... There were more "why"s there than he could formulate, or wanted to think about. One question kept torturing him: how _bad_ was the damage to their not-so-openly-called-like-that-friendship? Barbara was gone already. He _liked_ having Harvey around.

The last time he had felt that low was just before he had joined the army, when Roger had left for Ohio to marry his long-distance girlfriend. Jim had realized, at that point, that having a brother who couldn't stand you was still better than having no one at all. He had spent a month being _the_ Gordon in Gotham, telling the friends of his long-deceased father to please lose his number. Then he had enrolled.

Seven hours after Harvey had pushed him into a taxi to Arkham, Jim had told himself that he might as well face the firing squad without being dragged to it, and he had returned the man's single call. He had started by making clear that he was not lying dead somewhere in a pool of his own vomit. He had asked if Harvey had walked home ("I drove, you idiot". "You really shouldn't drive drunk". "Hey, I paid good money for that driving license. That would be a shitty investment if I could never use it!"). Then he had enquired if everyone was as hungover as he was, even if he knew that was not humanly possible. Then he had ran out of small talk.

"Maybe we should discuss the, uh, the... That thing I did."

"You mean when you got so shitfaced that you went and kissed me?"

"Uh, yeah, that. I just wanted to..."

Jim had nearly bit through his tongue at that point, before he went and did something moronic, like apologize. A kiss wasn't like punching the guy in the face, Jim couldn't go all "I deeply regret that", especially seeing how he had attempted to get him out of his pants. Harv' wasn't one to get insulted but it was no reason to act like a douche.

"... I mean, I just wanted to know, are we okay? I know it was unwelcome, and..."

Harvey had chuckled. And he had dissolved all of Jim's worries in that carefree, bawdy way of his.

"Getting it on with a blacked out drunk Playgirl model? Well, you know me, I was all for it, but some people call that _rape_."

Right.

"Uh, it's just, I thought you wouldn't..."

"Wow, you really think I'm a sleazebag."

"No, no, no, shit, Harv', I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

His friend had laughed again.

"Don't get your panties in a bunch, I get it, shit-for-brains. Think you'll sober up before the next decade?"

Jim had groaned at that, and Harvey just loved to make fun of his embarrassment, so he had kept talking.

"Just so you know, what you did to me was cruel and unusual punishment, that's what it was. We're gonna set up rules for the next time you get that hammered. Like, are you okay with fondling, or the whole shebang? I mean, me? Go ahead, use me, doesn't matter, had sex. You?"

"Er, I don't think I'll ever drink again, really. I-"

"Hey, this is Carlos", Alvarez's voice had cut in, with Harvey's protests as a background. "I want to hear _none_ of that shit, so why don't you call back after his shift."

Jim had swallowed his tongue at that, and hung up. He had not called back. Trust Bullock to have that kind of conversation at his bloody desk in the middle of the goddamn precinct.

Harvey hadn't called back either, not that day, anyway. He had given one or two phone calls a week, enough to keep Jim updated on the ongoing cases, on the hell he dragged his new partner through, of Essen's state of mind. The whole kiss thing had never been mentioned again. Jim felt something was amiss, but it was hard to say if he was right or if the overall mood of Arkham was making him paranoid.

The next weeks had gone poorly, with Gerry Lang impersonating Aubrey James, except pettier. Jim had attempted to get in touch with Barbara, but she didn't seem to drop by her flat and if she listened to the messages he left on her phone, she didn't answer them.

Meeting lovely, smart, charming Leslie Thompkins was the only pleasant thing that had happened to him in three weeks, but of course, it had to be because inmates had been electrocuted by some unknown assailant. He had called Harvey.

As he followed Lang to the infirmary, where he knew his ex-partner was waiting, his stomach was trying to find its way out of his belly through his throat. They were okay on the phone. Okay. Face to face, it...

"JIM!" Harvey shouted, all but pushing Lang out of the way to get to him. "Hahaha! Partner."

And he grabbed him by the shoulder and neck to drop an enthusiastic, wet kiss on his temple. Okay. They were okay face to face too, which was good, though Jim felt like pulling Harvey closer _by the hips_ and could hardly blame the vodka for that, not after three weeks.

"Let me take a good look at you", the other man said, his hand still on his shoulder.

Jim blushed like a schoolgirl - or only felt like it, he hoped - and wiped his face. Then Gerry Lang attempted to pull the authority figure act on Harvey. Oh, that was going to be _good_.

Five minutes later, Harv' had so thoroughly handled the man that all Jim could do was bite his cheeks to keep from laughing. He started chuckling as soon as they were out of the room.

God, he had missed that.

###

If Sarah had more than five hundred bucks to her name, she would have bribed the whole of City Hall as well as Boel to get Jim back. It was not only that she liked the man: he worked miracles on Harvey's disposition.

She couldn't, so she did the next best thing, and refilled their glasses.

###

###


	12. Friend

Jim's father had died a hero. It was an easy thing to do when your son was ten, and knew very little of you. Being the district attorney was an all-consuming job. It left you little time for your children, and when you had some, you used it well. You took them to the Super Bowl or Disneyland, you went camping and hiking, you taught them to take pride in being just and fair and brave. Then you bled out in a totalled car on the border of the highway, with your youngest boy sobbing and shaking next to you and _praying_ for you to stay awake.

Jim had held his hand to the end.

Yes, his father had died a hero who fought for the people of Gotham, for justice, and integrity, and he could have done so much more. Or so Jim had believed. Life took pleasure in enlightening him.

"I lied", he told Harvey after the man asked him where they were going, after he had bluffed in front of Boel so he could get back on Gruber's case.

So he could maybe, maybe, return to the force. You didn't clean a city from its asylum.

It wasn't fair to Harvey, really. It hadn't been just about being reinstated. Seeing Boel - just like any of his father's old croonies - had sent him into a rage, as it usually did. It made him feel like a teenager again, being groomed for law school and a life of bribes, favours and lies. It made him sick in the pit of his stomach, and it didn't get better when his father was mentioned.

"A proud station for a man of substance. "

Jim had a four letter words to describe that substance, which Boel himself was full of.

"Why did you become a policeman?" the commissioner had asked, like a great many judges and lawyers and crooks.

_Just watch_.

It really wasn't fair to Harvey, though. Someday, he would tell him all about his father and the kickbacks he took, the trips to Disneyland paid with the promise to let a hitman go free, the tickets to the Super Bowl earned by playing nice with Falcone's family, and the rage at the man who had died before he could punch him in the face. And to all of that, of course, Harvey would say "Do you have to _whine_ so much? It's the past. Let it go. Want some fries?"

Harvey wasn't one for feelings. Jim still thought he would understand.

###

Some people felt good to be around. You didn't have to talk to them, or to know them. They just did. It was probably some pheromones combination, some hormonal trick, combined with hints taken from the body language (though Edward never quite seemed to pick up on _that_ on the spot).

The woman who was visiting was _nice_. You just knew. She had that little something that made people stop and turn, too, that made you think of her randomly a few minutes after she passed by. It made people follow her with their eyes, and smile.

It made Jim stand up and look like something Edward couldn't quite define. He watched from afar, curious. She was smiling, too, eyes first and lips second. You could tell by the movement of the lower lids. Of course, looking at her eyes meant that Ed couldn't observe the rest of her, which was not conductive to a proper analysis of her character. He wished he had a better ability to read people. Supposedly, the skill was inborn. Facial expressions were the product of millennia of evolution. Darwin himself wrote about it. Yet, it took all of Edward's concentration to interpret the movements of a face. Muscles were so easier to understand on dead people.

Thankfully, he didn't have the same difficulties when Harvey Bullock was concerned. He had, after all, observed him for a while. Also, the throat clearing was blatant even to Edward: he didn't like being ignored. He was also crossing his arms. Crossing arms was a negative attitude, though it had many meanings depending on context. As Jim and his visitor seemed to enjoy talking, Harvey had grown irritated and requested - without explicit words - to be introduced.

Said introductions were short.

"Hola".

"Detective Bullock."

Harvey offered neither thanks nor compliments, which indicated a lack or interest, or maybe dislike, especially considering that he was talking to an attractive young woman who smelled very good.

Both Jim and the lady continued facing each other, giving their shoulder to Bullock who had gotten close.

Did that indicate intimacy between the two of them?

Edward was not sure it was a good thing. Bullock had made, up until now, a great many efforts to make himself suitable for Jim. That being said, if you thought about it logically, that fine and agreeable young woman was probably a much better choice of a partner. Being smiled to, instead of smirked to, made one feel better.

###

The first thing that came to Gillian's mind, when thinking of James Gordon, was "what a terrible waste of potential". Yet, he knew the young man wasn't the only one to blame for his poor life's choices.

James had been a sheltered child of a loving, but ambitious father, who could rarely spare time for his children and left their educations to his wife. He had married a good, caring woman he loved dearly. She was, however, too frail and docile: after her husband's death, she had dissolved, and been unable to control her two sons.

Gillian remembered the boys well. He had gone to the funeral of their father, a crowded affair where then-fifteen-years-old Roger had gathered with his friends and ignored the rest of the crowd. Little James, all but ten, was holding his mother's hand. Make-up had been applied to his face to conceal the bruises and cuts left by the car crash, but there was only so much one could do to hide open wounds. Yet the child had kept his chin up and his eyes dry, and had shaken hand after hand with his free one.

"Thank you so much for coming, sir. Thank you so much for coming, madam. Thank you so much for coming, judge. Thank you so much for coming, mayor."

The looks he spared his brother had been baleful.

His mother was weeping helplessly.

Four years later, young James Gordon had been the one who collected his drunk brother after parties, answered the phone for his mother, and made sure the bills were paid and the house tended to. Being proclaimed an adult at the tender age of fourteen left little room for personal development. One established a well-functioning routine to navigate the world, and felt no need to diverge from it. It gave the world men in their thirties with the rage of a teenager and the same uncompromising, black and white outlook on life. What reason had a man to change when he could soldier through everything?

And soldier through, James had.

Roger had not _bribed_, but manipulated his way through law-school, through favours and networking, only to follow his exiled girlfriend to Ohio once he had passed the bar exam. Seeing the "heir" abandon Gordon's legacy, the good friends of the family had turned to the "spare", who was trying his hand at a bachelor in criminal justice. Surely, he would go on to study law. Surely, he would grow to inherit his father's mantle. They had pressed him. He had sent them to hell to run into the loving arms of the army.

From the looks of it, war had taught him nothing but to wage _more_ wars.

Gillian almost felt sorry for Harvey Bullock, pathetic drunkard as he was. He was giving quite a lot of himself to his partner, yet was being used. The likes of James Gordon had no friends. They only had allies.

###

By the first "You think you've been careful so far", Jim was actually trying to give a serious explanation. Mostly. By the second, he was _extremely_ amused. By the third, he just felt _warm_, and comfortable. He also felt like getting closer to Harvey, again, which was becoming worrying. He couldn't blame the vodka, he couldn't blame his nerves. He felt relaxed and satisfied. Yet there was that pull, that feeling that being one step closer to Bullock would be _better_. It wasn't constant, it wasn't event _frequent_. He had worked with him for hours and not though about that once. Yet it seemed to happen more and more, which meant Jim would have to seriously question himself at some point. He had never been attracted by a man before, and this didn't feel like lust (he had comparison material enough after a few seconds in the vicinity of Leslie Thompkins, really). It didn't feel like love, it didn't feel like friendship, it didn't even feel like infatuation.

It didn't feel urgent either, so he put it to the back of his mind as he went to get a drink with the target of "it".

###

Theresa opened her mailbox and clicked on the new memo sent by the captain.

Then she chocked.

"Regardless of the circumstances and extraordinary events of the day, the next person caught mixing saliva with the drink of a colleague will receive a formal warning, as well as a throughout explanation on biochemical hazards by Edward Nygma."

###

###

###


	13. Best interests at heart

When Harvey told Natalia "Well, Fish knew the risks, didn't she?", he seemed not to give a damn about it. Poker face? Perfect. Tone? Uncaring. Pile of cigarettes in the ashtray? Sky high. Phone on the table, at the ready.

"Drive me home", she had said, and he had emptied his glass and taken her to her shitty little flat in the slums, where they never went because hotel rooms were larger.

As they arrived, she removed her socks and bra, and Harvey took the only available chair, struggling to fit his large frame in the little space between the table and the wall. He placed the phone next to him.

"Think she'll get out of this?" Natalia asked after slipping into baggy sweatpants and a wife-beater.

"Seen her save her ass from of tons of crazy shit before, so who knows?"

"Well fingers crossed, then."

"Yeah", he muttered.

There wasn't much to say. If he wasn't calling anyone, then there was nothing he could do. Natalia microwaved some water and made them instant coffee, then microwaved herself some sweet and sour chicken that she ate sitting on her laundry bag, a towel on her knees.

Harvey waved his phone.

"Do you have someplace I can charge the thing?"

"Bathroom. Or you can unplug something, I guess. I hope she'll be okay."

He lifted an eyebrow.

"What?" Natalia answered. "I owe her, about the whole Stanley thing."

She still remembered that day so well, when the powerful, famous Miss Mooney had sent Harvey to her, to help her with her so-called "ex-boyfriend". To a teen girl in dire straits - like, said, being pressed for money and sex by some jackass pimp who had seduced her out of her home and hooked her on drugs - any kind of help looked like a fucking bloody miracle. When it came from an high ranking mafia figure, with no hidden catch, no strings attached... One did not forget.

"You owe her nothing, you wrecked that son of a bitch all on your own. He still limps, right?"

"Like that jackass TV doctor, yeah. Whines about it a lot, too. And I do. She checked up on me a few days after the whole thing. She didn't have to do that."

"Fish loves helping out strays. Motherly instincts, all of that, though she doesn't show it much with the life she has. She doesn't like it one bit when you ladies are in trouble, especially the kids. Her mother was a working girl, maybe."

Natalia nodded.

"So she told me. No shame in that, she said. You just lift your chin and walk over those who would walk over you."

Harvey grinned.

"Yeah, sounds like her."

His smile faded in a second, as he got a charger out of his pocket and plugged it into the microwave's socket. Better let Fish's topic rest, Natalia thought.

"I heard you got Jim back?"

His sagging shoulders straightened at that, and he perked up.

"Yeah. Nearly got me sent to Arkham too, got us all fried by that loony weird dude with a fetish for electroshock. And put Maroni into _protective custody_. All in a day's work."

"You do looove to complain, don't you?"

"Hey, it's all very valid bellyaching here! Guy's an asshat."

"Seemed nice enough to me."

Harvey frowned. Natalia lifted her eyebrows. He frowned some more.

"What?" she said after a few moments of that glaring contest.

"You're not going to try to have a feelings talk, huh? I've had my share of feelings talks lately."

"Huh. I just wondered how long the two of you have been fucking, that's all."

"Wait a second, _what_? We're not _fucking_!"

"Could have fooled me, what with the twenty solid minutes you spent fondling his knee at the bar and he never even protested."

Harvey's dumbfounded look told her a lot about the whole thing.

"I did that?"

"Of course you did that, you clearly like the guy. Doesn't have to be a gay thing for you, you don't know what personal space is, but if he didn't notice he's one blind fool."

He groaned.

"That's one good thing about Jim", he commented after a while. "Are you going to sleep?"

"Well, it's what, three AM? We both should."

Harvey glanced at his phone. She sighed.

"Listen, you do what you must, just climb into my bed when you're done and try not to push me out of it."

She slept six hours and woke to his phone ringing. He had never joined her.

###

Someday, Jim thought, he would ask Harvey what his history with Fish Mooney was. For someone who didn't have a thing for her (or, more precisely "for nobody, my thing is for me"), he got awfully defensive when the woman was mentioned. The day she was missing after her attempt to take out Carmine Falcone failed was probably, certainly, absolutely not the right moment to be curious, though.

Sore subject.

###

Jim's anger was draining. It left Sarah exhausted and, from the pained look on Harvey's face, she wasn't the only one to feel helpless around him. Words didn't seem to be of any use to rein his rage in. His transfer to Arkham had only made things worse. Sarah didn't know what to do.

Now he was running into the way of Arnold Flass, of all people, and as usual he wouldn't stop until he obtained what he wanted. Someday his luck would run out. Against Flass, it would probably be sooner than later.

Where Sarah was worried, though, Harvey seemed distraught. When Gordon and Flass left the room, he groaned and ran a hand through his hair.

"I'll talk to him", he muttered.

"I fail to see what you could tell him that I haven't, really. That we haven't, repeatedly, for months."

"I'll try all the same, you never know."

But they both knew, didn't they? Sarah shook her head.

"He does not ever relent, does he?"

"Well, you know, there's that time I got him to take a "devil's bargain burger" instead of a hot-dog at Billy's, great victory of mine. Took only a week of nagging, too, and I didn't really try. I guess if I apply myself, I can get him to go after neither Delaware, nor Flass, nor Falcone today!"

Sarah felt cold.

Of all days, Jim was pulling that crap on the one where Fish Mooney was missing, and missing because she had tried to take down someone she shouldn't have. The _idiot_.

"No word from Fish?" she asked.

"No."

###

"You're not one to drink, captain."

Sarah jumped at the rough, concerned voice coming from the bar stool next to hers, and turned to Harvey, who had somehow appeared between her second and third glass of whiskey.

"Where were you tonight? You missed quite a speech."

"Personal problems", he muttered. "Are you alright?"

"Salvatore Maroni delivered a Strawberry Shortcake and a Rainbow Brite doll to my front door. Not personally delivered, of course, but he did sign the card. My girls are very happy. My husband less so."

"Shit. What did Jim do this time?"

"Deliver a speech for the soul of the GCPD and about his duty. Should have followed his father's footsteps and gone for lawyer instead of cop. Very good speech."

Bullock groaned.

"Sorry. I left him alone for how many hours? _Three_?"

"And then I arrested Flass. Carlos did the reading of the rights parts and his wife was stalked on her way back from work."

She drained her glass and started coughing. He patted her back.

"Can you go home?"

She thought so. Her phone call with Michael had been short but he hadn't explicitly told her she was not welcome in their house.

"I don't want to."

"Then I guess we can get blackout drunk together!"

She frowned an looked at him, to finally notice how drawn and puffy his face was.

"Fish?"

"Is fine", he said. "Came here to celebrate."

He grinned, and raised a glass of good old fashioned vodka.

"To clarity of mind."


	14. Scaredy-cat

Jim had fooled around with a guy, a long, long time before.

When he had admitted that to Thelma - the surprisingly warm and engaging redhead who had dragged his brother out of alcoholism when she had married him - she had asked "In the army?".

It hadn't been in the army. Personal business on the job was a recipe for trouble. No. It had happened in high-school, when he'd been fifteen and horny and stupid. His first girlfriend had been the daughter of his mother's best friend, a cute brown haired girl with a gold crucifix pendant and a purity ring. The hand-holding had been nice, and he had loved her - as much as he could back then - until they broke up, after six months of dating. Those six months hadn't brought much in the way of "intimacy", so when he had been offered a blowjob, he had jumped on the opportunity. Oh, he had been uneasy, because it came from another boy, a baseball player, his age, asian, smart and teasing and visibly terrified behind his bravado. In the end, after three, maybe four times, Stacy Foster had asked him out and... "Sorry, dude. Not really working for me, uh."

Asian boy whose name and face he had long since forgotten had said "okay, right", and walked away. Jim, back then, knew what heartbreak looked like when it faked well-being, what with his mother being a stellar example of it. He had felt guilty as hell for the whole two weeks it took for Stacy to sleep with him and snatch his heart.

That had been the extend of his experiments with men. One disaster had been enough. So, the prospect of being attracted by an older man was confusing at best. Someone he worked with, too, and not just that either. Harvey, of all people. _Harvey_.

Jim had to consider it, of course, that something, that occasional urge to get closer to the man, to draw_ him_ closer. It wasn't sexual, or maybe just a little, rarely, like when Harv' had removed his vest and stretched at his desk, and Jim had wanted to push his thumbs across his spine, up and up to the shoulders and to... It _mostly_ wasn't sexual.

It didn't nearly compare to the giddiness he felt when he talked to Leslie on the phone or when he considered - panicked about - asking her on a date (how many years had it been since his last _date_, anyway?). But it had to be analysed, just to be fair to her. Put all of that in a nice box labelled "won't bite you in the ass".

He played fantasies in his head every now and then, not for kicks, but more to figure out what the ideas did to him. Hands there, mouth there, naked, not naked, one minute after or one year, bantering, fighting. "Yes", "no", "maybe", "I don't know". Being crushed against a wall _did_ work, as an image, especially at night, alone with himself. The rest of it, for the most part, he could barely picture, because Harvey Bullock didn't fit into those scenarios. It wasn't that Jim was disgusted, or contrary, or anything. Just that it didn't feel like him, the "into men" thing, even if he had said "I'm all for it, being fondled by a playgirl model".

Another breaking deal was that Harvey was a one-night-stand kind of guy, was proud of it, bragged about it, and Jim was not. "High school sweetheart, then a bunch of hos overseas, only made you sad". Harvey had nailed him with those words.

Even if you knew how to breach that topic with the guy, even if you were good at the whole flirting thing, even if you were certain of what that attraction was, you... Well, Jim had none of those things anyway. And Leslie was charming and beautiful and sane and happy and everything he could possibly dream off.

Also, Harvey seemed to be _quite_ into that red-headed girl.

###

Redhead or not, Jim had considered testing the waters with Harvey. A little. "All for it" raised questions and maybe he could ask "Are you still up for that, or was it a one-time only thing?". Or he could try to get closer, get warmer, and try to see if Bullock had any kind of feelings about the whole thing, which was like trying to read Chinese blindfolded. As far as poker faces went, Jim could manage "good", but Harvey had a knack for totally disconnecting his face from his brain when he so wanted.

The easiest path to follow was the questioning, and Jim was about to dive right into it, when Harvey asked him about _Leslie_. And then _Barbara_. And righteous breakup sex. While investigating a lead in the gloomiest abandoned factory in town.

Of all awkward conversations.

"You notice I don't ask you about your love life?" Jim pointed out even if he had been just about to.

"My love life is an open book and a short and nasty one", his partner replied, before adding that he thought he had a chance with the red haired friend of their vic'.

"You see why I don't ask."

Harvey dropped the banter, for a very serious next comment:

"Don't screw it up with the doctor."

The questioning, Jim thought, would not be necessary. Any suspicions of a lasting interest from the man were well and properly buried now.

"I'll try not to."

His partner reverted to jokes immediately, of course, and it was alright. Jim was no lovestruck teenager, and even as a teenager, small disappointments like that had hardly fazed him. He smiled at the teasing, until a scream made them jump.

###

Sarah entered her office to find, once again, Harvey Bullock standing inside it. He was looking through the window, pensive, and tensed as she entered. He didn't turn. Being surprised was idiotic, she reckoned. The room had become his go-to place when he felt like being alone, lately.

Everyone was in the bullpen, gossiping about Jim and his heated kiss with Leslie Thompkins. Harvey had been nowhere to be found for the last half-hour, though. She should have known.

"Everything alright?" she asked.

"Yeah, cap'. Want your room back?"

"Really alright?"

That got him to look at her. He frowned. She waited.

"So you did see. That evening."

"You and Jim? Yes."

He grunted and turned to the window again. Sarah took a step towards him.

"Miss Thompkins has applied for the M.E. opening. Are you fine with me hiring her?"

His shoulders went stiff.

"Why the fuck would that concern me?" he snapped.

"Because I don't want drama? If there's something going on with you and him, I don't want to do anything that would make you uncomfortable."

"Oh for fuck's sake", he mumbled.

"Don't you come and tell me I shouldn't be concerned."

"You shouldn't! What is wrong with you women? You see a few Meg Ryan movies and you think it's real life? We were drunk. Once. That's not a fucking civil union. Why the fuck would I care if you hired his girlfriend?"

Sarah hesitated. Harvey overshared many things, from his crazy adventures to his sexual prowesses, but if there was a topic he never covered, it was feelings. Attempting to get through his posturing and pride was a foolproof way to get shot down real quick. She still couldn't help herself.

"It's not just that and you know it. The people who know you well, your friends... We're not blind, you know?"

He still didn't turn.

"More 'n you think", he muttered, opening the window to light a cigarette.

The smoking was a bait, and Sarah didn't rise to it. Not that didn't grate her worse than nails on a blackboard, of course. It was a very good bait. She was still concerned. Harvey was beyond besotted with Jim. It had become abundantly clear that he would do anything for the man, no matter what the cost. His reputation? His friends? His safety? His life? No problem. While she understood that he might not want to admit those inclinations to Jim himself, she wished he would at least accept to discuss them with someone who could see them clear as day. Then again, one shouldn't expect any kind of sentimentalism from Harvey Bullock.

It was a shame, really. Sarah was starting to believe that Jim reciprocating the feelings wasn't totally outside the realm of possibilities, provided Harvey worked for it. As for Leslie Thompkins, she was qualified, and lovely, and strong, and good-hearted. She was probably a really great fit for Jim. That being said, she was still a stranger, and Harvey was a friend who had been lonely for far too long.

"You know we all care for you and want you to be-"

He turned to her in one swift, tense movement.

"Don't you _dare_ finish that sentence."

He threw his cigarette out the window and took one step towards Sarah. Her feet moved on their own, and she recoiled.

"I hope you weren't going to say 'happy', because that would be a fat pile of bullshit. What was the suggestion going to be? Sabotage the cute lady or try to get the pretty boy? You all and your stinking _bets_ and _suggestions_ and bloody _fantasies._ 'Oh, look, Bullock is totally into Gordon! Is he going to find his balls and make a move?'. Could you and the others stop for a mother-ass-fucking _second_ and consider that I might not _want to_?"

Sarah had taken another step back.

"I didn't mean... I didn't imply..."

"_Yes you did, you stupid cunt, when you went and asked me if it would be alright if Thompkins was hired! _Well I have news for your well-meaning ass. I don't give a fuck about his girlfriend. Do I strike you as shy? If I wanted the man, I'd have _asked_. He's rage, in and out, won't ever fucking let go of it until he's done with his bloody crusade. And you people want me to go for someone like him? _Been there, done that, never again!_"

On that note, he pushed her out of the way and stormed out. She breathed in, breathed out, breathed in, then looked through her office glass door to see if they had attracted any attention. They barely had. Then again, Harvey screaming at her and slamming the door behind him as he left wasn't exactly out of the norm. She closed the blinds and sat down to catch her breath.

Fuck.


	15. Unprofessional

"Are you going to tell me why you've been avoiding Bullock for days now?" Carlos asked as Sarah fidgeted around her office, in a bundle of nerves.

"No. And I haven't been avoiding Bullock. Why would you think that?" she retorted, spreading the blinds open with two fingers to get a better look on the bullpen.

"I don't know. Because you've been avoiding him?"

"_Carlos._"

He shook his head. He knew Sarah well. She was serious, qualified, though as nails and many, many things, but she was a worrier. She _liked_ people and, while she couldn't really get close to them considering her position of authority, she wanted the best for them. She cared for them. She really, really hated it when they ran into trouble. Considering her favourites were the overgrown children of the GCPD, her life was not easy.

She checked the time again. It was a quarter to eight. Early enough for the sane people who didn't basically live in the building, like a new medical examiner.

"Has either of you apologized?" Carlos said in his best noncommittal tone.

Sarah whirled and gaped at him.

"How is it that no one seems to ever remember that my desk a staircase away from your office?" Carlos commented. "I could hear the shouting from downstairs, but considering I was right behind the door when it started..."

"Oh. _Oh_."

"And I can keep my mouth shut. If I want to mess with Harvey, there's enough material to do so without touching the sensitive stuff. I do worry about you, however."

"We both apologized", she muttered. "I guess things are alright, but we haven't been 'best pals' either."

"Stop panicking. If you were on his shit list, you wouldn't have to 'guess' how things are. No gun in your face this week, right?"

She groaned.

"Always the voice of reason, aren't you?"

"Channelling my inner Sarah Essen, I suppose."

"Was that a compli... She's here. Wish me luck."

Alvarez looked outside. The charming young lady Gordon had kissed a few days before had just arrived, and nothing had exploded.

"You don't need luck. Go."

And she went, and Carlos stopped watching the two idiots and focused on her, because what man - even a married one - could miss an opportunity to look at her ass? "All the men of the precinct she caught doing that, idiot. They're cured of that whole peeking thing", his brain quickly answered. Not that he was in any danger of being spotted. Sarah was talking to Leslie Thompkins.

As was to be expected, Harvey took the new arrival quite well. He didn't snap at the lady, didn't threaten her, didn't punch her in the softest parts of her anatomy, didn't even raise his voice. He just shook her hand with a hearty "welcome aboard". Carlos knew Sarah had been anticipating disaster, but she _was_ a worrier. Bullock was in his late forties, with a thick hide and a very private mindset on _some_ topics (Alvarez wished he could add "sex" to the list). He wasn't about to collapse like a schoolgirl because the man he liked had found someone else. On the contrary, he teased Jim about his relationship. "A fine lady like that", he said.

Gordon, who had the worst poker face in the world even when he tried, and who wasn't trying now, must have been endless fun to someone like Harvey. Every bit of teasing or terrible advise got a grimace out of the man.

Carlos had stopped listening in, but Bullock's next words caught his ear.

"Office romance always ends in tears... Tears!"

"It's not gonna be like that", Jim swore.

"Trust me. I know."

Alvarez nearly lost it.

###

Jim had felt, most of the day, like a fish out of water. Well, a good part of the day, when he wasn't investigating the the case, refraining from killing Oswald Cobblepot, or failing to save a teenager from a lifetime of sheer terror. It had been, all things considered, a really terrible Monday.

Except with Lee. She was wonderful. She was going to drive him insane before the week was done, but he adored her. That being said, he was quickly realizing he had no idea how to handle a woman who knew how to handle herself. From age ten, all he had ever done was to drag people out of their issues. He had held his mother's hand as she struggled with depression, then cancer. He had kicked Roger's ass to stop him from drinking so much. In the army, he had quickly made it to sergeant, with all the responsibilities it entailed. And then, Barbara... He had loved Barbara very much - still did, even if he had put it to the back of his mind with the other ghosts - but she had come with weaknesses he had no idea how to handle.

Leslie could not only manage herself, she could manage him. It was confusing, and frustrating, and infuriating, and he _really_ wished she would forget about their relationship at work, but it felt wonderful. She turned him into a teenage boy with one smile and a tilt of the eyebrows, but it left him more relaxed than he had been in two decades or so. When he didn't want to strangle her, or himself, or someone.

He also wished none of that would happen where Harvey could see, and comment. Jim _did_ feel vaguely guilty about dating Lee. Faintly. Something _still_ didn't feel quite right, and the more he thought about it, the more he suspected that something was _him_. The other man sure as hell didn't seem concerned about the whole thing. "Don't screw it up with the doctor". "So how did that date go?". "A fine lady". They had visited Scottie Mullen when she was still hospitalized, and Harvey looked smitten with her. Why not? She was gorgeous, and fun, and countered his shameless flirting with quick wit and teasing. She would be perfect for him. It left Jim's stomach into knots. Loose, basic knots, not really worrying ones, but it did.

_It can be that easy. A good life for him, a good life for you. You're halfway in love with Lee already, so what is your problem?_

So, for a while, Harvey's friendship had been the only thing he had. He had been lonely. He had grown attached. It meant nothing. So he wanted to _touch_ him, fantasized about it at night - though less and less, because _Lee_ - and sometimes did more than just picture it. So he sometimes felt like reaching out, when they were sitting next to each other to check evidence, and to put a hand on his tight and maybe higher. How many months had it been since Barbara had left? He had just been alone for too long. It would pass.

_To the back of your mind with the ghosts_.

###

"He takes some time to warm up to people", Jim had said about his partner. "Trust me on that."

Leslie did believe him. She at least thought he meant what he said, which was maybe a bit more optimistic than what her observational skills led her to think. Oh, Harvey Bullock would warm up to her, but it was a long way from the South Pole to there. He wasn't a "people person", she got that. But she was concerned, for a variety of little reasons that kept piling up. There was the way detective Alvarez looked puzzled when she flirted with Jim, and would look to her, then Bullock, then back. There was captain Essen's poorly concealed look of worry, and the way she would observe Jim's partner through her blinds when he wasn't looking her way. And, of course, there was Jim's backpedaling about that job he had suggested she apply for. Not that she didn't see that he had issues with the idea of a relationship at work - he clearly did - but she wasn't certain it accounted for all of his unease.

Then, there were the bets.

She gathered her courage and walked to Bullock's desk. He was still there, though more busy reading the news than actually working. He tensed as she arrived, even though he had his back to her, and she nearly cringed. The South Pole indeed. She took Jim's chair and dragged it to the side of the desk.

He sighed.

"Can I help you?"

That tone was about as inviting as the barrel of a gun, but Leslie could deal with that.

"Hm. Maybe. I'm not sure. It's a small thing, really. I've worked here for eight whole hours and I heard there's three separate bets going on about you and Jim. They don't quite know if you're going to shoot him, kick him in the crotch, or date him."

He placed his newspaper on his desk and smoothed it.

"So you decided to come and get the juicy details from the source?" he mocked.

"God, no. If there was something to be curious about here, I would wait for Jim to tell me about it. No. I want to know who the ringleaders of that little gossip cult are, so I can avoid them."

He blinked at that, and relaxed for half a second. Then he frowned again.

"There's an email chain. Just wait until one of those bozos forgets to remove your from the mass-forward."

"I take it it has happened before."

"That's exactly what I was implying, aren't you a smart one."

She smiled. It gave her something to do while she tried to find a way though that wall of hostility. Maybe Jim was right and time was the answer. He knew his partner, didn't he?

"Do I have any hope to get along with you at some point?"

He took a deep breath and rolled his eyes.

"Girl scouts. You don't like it a bit when someone doesn't like you, don't you? Not used to the feeling. Never happens. It's that smile. Wraps people around your finger real nice, I bet."

"Actually I'm not _quite_ as popular, though it would come in handy. And I'm not here to try and soothe my poor little injured feelings. You're Jim's best friend, I suspect his _only_ friend. I thought it would be good if we could _not_ give each other the cold shoulder all the time."

"I'm not giving anyone the cold shoulder here. This is me being me. That being said, keep nagging me and you'll get an idea of what I do when I _actually_ don't like someone."

Leslie nodded and sat up.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't be so pushy, I'll leave you alone", she said as she put the chair back in its place.

Bullock called her back as she was walking away.

"You come back here."

She grinned. Couldn't help it. Couldn't have helped it if she had sewn her mouth shut with barbed wire (which was actually a disturbing image and indicated it was a good, good thing that she wasn't working in Arkham anymore).

She went back to the chair and sat.

"You stop worrying right now. He _likes_ you. You seem to do him a bloody lot of good, and you haven't even slept with him yet. Things are gonna be fine."

Leslie suddenly felt lighter, even if she could have done without the details on her sexual life.

"Thank you. I... Was indeed worried."

"If that can put your mind at rest, I won't kick him in the crotch. I know you'll need those parts."

"That's, er, very considerate?"

"And shooting someone, there's just endless paperwork, it's really not worth the bother."

"I wasn't concerned about the rumors at all."

"Not even the third one - that you and I both know didn't exactly use the word 'dating' - then?"

"Nope. Even if I _did_ believe silly idle gossip... May the best man win! No. You want scary? Try going on a first date with someone and have the background music be 'Love will tear us apart'. Now, as far as signs go, _that's _terrifying."

He chuckled at that. Leslie smiled in victory.

"Well, I dunno", he said. "Did he pick the music? Because if he did, you might want to start running."


	16. Epilogue

Summer clothes, check. Shoes, check. Sunscreen (tons of), check. All portable electronics in a box, alongside all jewelry and other valuables, check. The TV could probably fit in the car, so would her vinyls collection. No such hope for her fridge and washing machine - and the damn thing was brand new, too - so it would be garage sale fort those and what she couldn't give away to friends. Her remaining clothes would go to charity. The crap she hadn't sorted yet was stuffed into boxes that she had tetrised nicely in the trunk of her car.

Quite efficient flat-emptying considering it had been done in two days and alone.

Scottie sighed in relief and went to collapse onto the sofa… That her best friend's cousin had picked up the day before. Bed, then. She threw herself on the mattress and closed her eyes. She would miss that mattress. Expensive piece of fluff, it was, but it was comfy.

The doorbell rang. She swore under her breath. What now?

She went and opened the door, fully prepared to slam it in the face of any disgruntled neighbour or Jehova witness. It was Harvey Bullock, who was smiling that old dog smile of his, perfectly at ease. His hat was off, in a surprising display of politeness. Ah. The flirting game was on again? Good. The worry she had gotten from everyone after her mass-murderer-induced drowning was getting tiresome.

"Oh, hello, detective Bullock! I, hum, wasn't expecting you."

She was referring to her incredibly fashionable clothes: flip-flops, a wife-beater, and pyjama pants. Real classy. Then again, she had never told him where she lived, so how was she supposed to know he would visit? If he had an opinion about her clothes, he didn't share it. She had a suspicion his thoughts stopped at "entirely too covering".

"So, I guess you found my home?" she said with a smile.

"Yeah, we police are the best stalkers, we can get a lady's address easy as pie. Got your phone, too, but it seems to be disconnected."

"Come in! And yes, I had it cut off, I'm moving."

He followed her inside, and took in the disaster scene around him. Empty furniture with duct-taped doors, boxes piled up everywhere, trash bags filled with clothing, dust everywhere, and a very confused tabby cat.

"To where?" he asked after thirty seconds of gaping.

"Metropolis for a few weeks. I have a cousin there. See, I'd figured I'd learn to swim."

"In _Metropolis_?"

"Yes! I swear it makes sense."

"I'm listening?"

"See, I thought knowing how to not sink like a stone would help with the pool phobia. Wouldn't do much for the wet chlorine smell and the noises and everything else, but, you know, floatability, _yay_!"

"In Metropolis?"

"Well, here we have pools or the river, and I'm not touching the river. Ugh."

"Oh right, too corpsey."

"I was going to say too polluted with all the factories, but… What do you mean, _corpsey_?"

"It's the mob's landfill. If they ever drag it, they're going to find a few dozen suicide victims. Don't worry, none of them were alive when they hit the water."

"As I was saying, I'm not touching the river. Gosh."

He chuckled, then looked around again, lost in thought. That went on for quite a while.

"So, when are you leaving, again?"

Scottie could nearly read his mind.

"Are you trying to calculate if you have enough time left to get me out of my pants?"

"Would that be wrong?"

She laughed.

"You are terrible. Have I ever told you that?"

"You said 'bad', actually. When I was trying to negotiate that date."

"I… Kind of remember the ploys you used, yes. Shameless, shameless man."

"Hey, I'm actually afraid of dying alone. That was one hundred percent a true fear. It just so happens that no person on earth wants to die alone, so maybe it didn't sound _special_. Should I have invented something?"

"I'll let this slip this once."

"But you're right. I owe you one real, personal fear. What about we discuss it over Chinese?"

She giggled.

"You never relent, do you?"

"Well, I was looking forward to that date with you, minus the abduction by a crazy lunatic. Even at my age, I'm yet to have one date, any date, that doesn't involve a sociopath."

Scottie lifted her eyebrows.

"Your relationships must be unusually short."

"Oh, no, I was with someone for three whole years. It's just that she was the sociopath."

"Are you joking? I can't tell if you're joking."

He just looked at her.

"Oh my god, you're _not_ joking. You know it's bad form to diss your ex, right?"

"Just a few weeks ago, she had me tied up to a butcher hook so I would be cut into pieces by a thug in an executioner hood."

"I take back what I just said."

"So, Chinese?"

"I'm more of an Italian kind of person."

"Works for me."

Forty minutes later, they were eating pizza and discussing fears. Harvey was quite candid about it, for someone so used to posturing and aloofness.

"It's a lot of small crap. I don't really have something that stops me dead in my tracks and cripples me. Not that it's a luxury you have in my line of work, either. You're terrified? Better swallow it down real quick and move your ass. It's not just your life on the line."

Scottie chewed on her pineapple slice, thoughtfully. He looked down at her hawaiian pizza with disgust. "Profanity", he had deemed it. "If you wanted shit pizza, we could have gone to Dominos". He was a fun man to tease.

"Small crap?"

"Dying alone would suck. What is even suckier is that it implies everyone else you cared about died before you did. I mean, I'll probably croak before fifty-five, and if I don't get a bullet, I'm not that far away from liver failure."

"Don't you just know how to sell your qualities."

"Hush."

She nodded and refilled their glasses. Now was not the time to banter.

"My friends… My friends are a bunch of crazy assholes, really. The name 'Don Falcone' rings a bell?"

"It does."

"Gordon went and raided his manor. That was actually one of the less harebrained things he did since I met him. Someday I'll find his body riddled with bullets, or maybe shurikens, I don't put it past the kid. Got into a sword fight with a maniac with a katana a while ago."

Scottie gaped. As a counsellor for phobics, she had heard a variety of tales on the causes of fears, some much darker than others, but she was still very new to the "criminally insane" thing.

"Best friend?" he continued. "On the run from the Mafia. Every now and then I get a message from one of those two idiots. 'Hey, Harvey, I went to track down that hitman alone". 'My plans didn't work quite as planned'. And I get cold feet. I don't wanna go. I don't want to be the one to find them in pieces. I've stopped caring about strangers a long time ago, but… Yeah. So. That's what I'm afraid of."

There were a great many ways to treat phobias. CBT, therapy, anxiolytics, it took time, but you had a way out. You couldn't cure yourself of being human, however. Those who managed to became monsters like Crane.

She took Harvey's hand.

"On a lighter note, when I was five or so, I was terrified of bathtub drains", he said. "Spent two months wailing and fighting not to be washed."

"You saw that horror movie with the snakes in the pipes."

She knew about it. It was a common fear.

"Nope. With the poltergeist clowns in the pipes, thanks so much for that, Dad. Snakes would have made _sense_. Are you going to eat that last slice?"

"I thought Hawaiian pizza was blasphemous."

"But I'm still hungry and you've eaten less than half of it."

"Go ahead, steal my food, I won't mind."

He did, and complained about the taste of the pizza and her lack of it, and she teased back, and it felt good. After her abduction, keeping herself sane and optimistic had taken every ounce of her will and then some. She had spent hours shaking in her hospital bed, then her own flat. When Crane had been caught, she had gone to visit his son, in order to punch the little shit in the face. Then she had _seen_ the state he was in, and her fear and rage had turned into _nothingness_.

The world had felt like a very dark place, all of a sudden. She knew all the tricks to keep people moving forward, though, and she wasn't above taking her own advice. Keep progressing. Keep building. One step at a time. Every day, look back, and see what you accomplished. Still, being happy took effort. It was a relief not to have to work for it, for once.

They talked about silly things like junkies who stole ducks from mansions, and how a whole circus was interrogated by the GCPD. She admitted to buying plane tickets while drunk, to visit her boyfriend, and ending up in Springfield, _wrong state_. Then she told him about being invited to a pool party as a teenager, and spending the whole evening making out with her friend's brother inside so she would have an excuse not to get near the water.

"And so that's the story of how I lost my virginity to a stranger I talked to twice, and nearly married two years later."

Harvey stole a quarter of her tiramisu.

"That didn't work out?"

"Same guy as the long-distance boyfriend in Springfield, Illinois. We were broke students, couldn't see each other, could barely afford to call... We drifted apart."

Harvey nodded.

"I get that."

"So. Sounds like it might be sensitive, even material for a support group too, but I'm dying of curiosity. Any other stories about that sociopathic girlfriend of yours? I think we drank enough to get to the 'let's be insensitive as hell' part of the evening.'

"Nah, nothing special. She has the mother of all bad tempers and can go batshit crazy sometimes, but the butcher hook thing was easily the most interesting thing she ever did. Ah, once she managed to get my gun and shot at me until I ran out of her building. Had to declare my piece as lost, got a formal warning from my captain, and more generally a lot of shit about it. I'm still none too happy about that."

She laughed. He smiled.

"Most marking memory _not_ related to my life being in danger? She has those fake nails, terrifying things, I swear they're made of melted scalpels, anyway what I mean is that I have some scars on my back that are _very awkward_ to explain."

Scottie gaped at that, her spoon halfway in her mouth. She waited until she was sure not to choke on her dessert to swallow.

"Awkward, really?" she teased. "Getting scars in bed? Sounds to me like the kind of thing you couldn't wait to brag about."

He clicked his tongue.

"Only with other guys. I'm all proper when I talk to a lady."

Scottie nearly suffocated. She should have waited to eat that second spoon.

He brought her home twenty minutes later and kissed her at the door.

"Do I get to come in?"

"You know, I'm at that point of my life where I should stop wasting time with one night stands and get that fiancée my mom is nagging me about."

"Not sure your mother would approve of me. Also, you're never coming back from Metropolis, are you? You'd have to be an idiot."

She took a long, deep breath. He had a point. She wasn't running away, per se, but she had no job in Gotham, and her support group had exploded. She did need some change.

"Alright, come on in."

His grateful smile got a grin out of her.

Quite a while later, she was yawning in his arms.

"You don't do this often, do you?" she asked.

"Oy! I didn't get the impression there was anything wrong with my performance here!"

Scottie chuckled.

"Your performance was just fine. I mean you don't get close and cuddly and open, right?"

He snorted.

"Helps that I'll never see you again?"

"Ha! Coward."

"Yep. Absolutely."

She lifted herself on an elbow and looked at him.

"You should. Do this more often. I'm not saying drop your crazy weird friends, but do make new ones. Preferably some you can build something with not based on saving their asses. You're very good at being a nice guy. You deserve to be treated like one."

"And here I thought I hated feeling talks", he muttered. "Motivational speeches are so much worse."

She whacked his head.

If the choice had been Jim's, he'd have been at Lee's, in bed, with no plans of getting out for two days. As Leslie had a job, and an autopsy to do for Alvarez's current case, he had ended up going out for beers with Harvey. It sincerely wasn't that bad. It just wasn't sex with a lovely young woman.

"So, how is the lady in the sheets?" his partner asked. "I bet she's a firecracker. Bossy like that..."

Or maybe it was exactly that bad.

"Please, please, please shut up now because I won't be discussing it, ever."

"Just curious."

Jim cringed.

"Don't be curious. I'd rather listen to you bragging about your quickie with the contortionist."

"I don't kiss and tell."

"You kiss and tell all the time. It just doesn't suit you to change the subject."

"Hey, just curious!"

He groaned. The other man chuckled.

"I take it back, maybe _your_ office relationship won't end in tears. The lady is special."

Jim blushed. She was. Then Harvey patted his shoulder as he rose to go fetch another beer, and left a cold sensation where his hand had not stayed. That... That had to be buried, now. Leslie was perfect, and he had _committed_ to her, and he couldn't do that to her. Not even just in his mind, not even just sometimes, when he was taken by surprise. He closed his eyes and grimaced.

He felt Bullock come back, stand next to him for a moment, then sit down. He opened his eyes and smiled.

"You alright?" Harvey asked.

"Yeah."

He must not have sounded very convincing, or maybe it was just plain on his face that something was wrong, because the other man just frowned.

"I am alright", Jim insisted.

"If you say so."

_Bury it_, Gordon thought. _Let it go_.

"So, I'm curious, since you're such an expert. Let's see how wise your advice is. What do you do when you're attracted to two people at the same time?"

"I attempt to fuck them both, obviously. Did you even need to ask?"

Jim winced. Yeah. No.

"And you are really sweet little boy if you start worrying at just the two. Now, what's that about? Oh right. I heard Barbara was back in town."

Jim's froze at that. Was she? And why would _Harvey_ know before he did?

"Uh. Yes. I think she is", he bluffed.

"So this isn't an 'attraction' question, it's a 'feelings' one. Whole different sack of beans."

"Is it now?"

"Yes. Especially with you being you. So. You pick one. You stick to your choice. It's really not rocket science", Harvey said with yet another hearty pat on his back.

"Hey, I think it's the first time since I met you I hear you be right about something", Jim teased.

His stomach was in his shoes. That was what he had to do, even though 'picking' was not the right word here. Picking implied you had a choice. What he had was Leslie, for sure, and nothing at all from Harvey. Just fantasies and inappropriate reactions to friendly touches.

"I'm right all the time, you asshat", his partner snapped. "You just won't admit it. _Pick one_."

"Yes. Yes."

"And, because I'm aware of your hero complex, I'll even elaborate. You pick the one who is right for you. You pick the one who wants all of who you are, even your crazy run into danger fetish. What you _don't_ pick is the one you have to drag up all the time, the one who wants you to stop being a warrior, the one who can't cope with the idea of you being at risk. You don't pick the one who wants you to change, because people never do."

Jim frowned, and looked at him.

"Why do I get the feeling you don't like Barbara much?"

Why did he get the feeling the conversation wasn't about her at all?

"Never said I didn't like Barbara. I said... Don't go and try to make it work with someone who isn't right for you. Sure, you can both work at being better at being together. You can compromise, and change, and grow, and tear yourselves apart in the process. Not worth the pain, in my humble opinion."

"So what? I throw away someone I _love_ because the road might be harder?"

Harvey emptied his glass.

"You idiot", he mumbled. "You first-class, A-grade idiot."

Jim shut up and waited. He could see the man was attempting to collect his thoughts. He was rarely that serious. He had never, so far, talked about something this personal. All he ever had to say about feelings came as a punch line to crude jokes. This talk was exceptional and it was worth listening to.

"When you _love_ someone, your job is not to keep them to yourself", Bullock said after a few minutes, in a soft voice. "It's to give them the best. And if the best isn't with you, then you be their friend and help them along. Anything else is time lost. You don't work at making that person right for you. You pick someone who's _already_ that, and the one you let go? You hope she finds the same."

Jim swallowed. This was not about Barbara at all, was it?

He leaned forward.

"Harvey..."

"Want another beer?" the man offered, standing up in one swift, carefree movement. Away from him.

Jim just looked up. His partner didn't even glance at him, just picked both their empty glasses up and walked away. No, this hadn't been about Barbara at all, and Harvey wasn't a blind man. He was probably much more observant than Jim. Pushing him away after that kiss. Teasing him about it, as if it had meant nothing. Encouraging him to stay with Leslie. All of that deliberate, soft rejection.

Jim felt about to puke.

Still, when Harvey came back, he took the glass of beer he gave him, and smiled, and drank. It sincerely wasn't that bad. It was the best choice, too.

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Notes: Thanks for the comments and encouragements. I hope you enjoyed this.

I've started writing a sequel ;)


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